By Cari Lynn Pace & Barry Willis
Where does embellishment belong in storytelling, if the goal is to create emotional truth?
Theater veteran Libby Oberlin directs this extraordinary comedic drama filled with challenging questions on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse. You won’t find better acting than this, with incisive dialog and a plot that took seven years to determine the outcome. The production runs through May 24.
The Lifespan of a Fact was written by Jeremy Karaken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell, based on the book by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal. Its premise: it’s possible to do a job too well.
A famous writer, masterfully channeled by Marty Pistone, authors a poignant essay and submits it to a literary magazine called “The Believer.” His no-nonsense editor Emily Penrose (Emily Lynn Cornelius, alternating with Shanay Howell) is on a tight deadline to publish. She recognizes the article’s great potential for future awards and accolades for her magazine. She also knows the writer’s reputation for taking liberties with actual circumstances, so she hesitates to run the essay until the facts have been verified.
Keenly aware of the magazine’s solid reputation for integrity, she assigns an eager young intern named Jim Fingal (Noah Vondralee-Sternhill ) to fact-check the submitted essay for accuracy. Despite his proud Harvard credentials and the fact that he contributed a couple of pieces to the Crimson, the Harvard student paper, Fingal doesn’t know the difference between news reporting and literary nonfiction and takes his task far too seriously, leading to intellectual and physical confrontations with the author, whose 15-page take on Las Vegas as the suicide capital of the United States opens with a description of a teenage boy jumping from a hotel roof to the pavement
Not understanding that D’Agata’s essay is the journalistic equivalent of an impressionist painting—more about the feel of a place rather than its actual look—Fingal’s obsessive fact-checking ultimately runs to 130 pages of notes, and consumes seven years of wrangling before the piece finally sees daylight, for which its author might have netted $1200 if he were lucky.
Vondralee-Sternhill brings perfect comedic timing and a hapless determination to his role as he confronts the curmudgeonly author. Both author and the editor—who has to intervene in the dispute—get more from this intern than they ever expected, or wanted.Pistone is magnificent as the irascible author with minimal tolerance for petty details. Editor Emily is somewhere in the middle.
Laurynn Malilay does a fabulous job with set design, sound, and projections.
Adroitly directed by Libby Oberlin, The Lifespan of a Fact is a witty and erudite excursion into a little-known corner of the publishing world. All three performers are fully engaged in this delightful comedy that may make some in the audience reconsider the truthfulness of much that they read. It will also enlighten them about the difference between accuracy and emotional truth. The two are related but lie far apart on the conceptual scale. This play makes that plainly and hysterically
Playing through May 24, 2026 on the Monroe Stage at 6th Street Playhouse, 52 West 6th Street, Santa Rosa.
Click HERE for more information and tickets.
Photos by Eric Chazankin
Cari Lynn Pace is a long-time Bay Area theatre critic whose reviews were regularly featured in the Marinscope Community Newspapers and a voting member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.
Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact: barry.m.willis@gmail.com
North Bay Stage and Screen 