The lifespan of a Fact, Sydney Theatre company, Ros Packer Theatre, 20 Sept-22 Oct 2022

 

Having one of Sydney's larger auditoriums may feel like a blessing for the Sydney Theatre Company, but occsionally what they really want to do in that venue is an intimate three person philosophical comedy looking at the gap between facts and truth, dealing with a real-life exchange between a magazine essayist and the intern assigned to fact check his essay. And while Paige Rattray's production pulls out all the bells and whistles (plus a clarinetist), in the end I'm not sure that smaller wasn't the better way to go for this story. 

Admittedly, there are compensations here. Marg Howell's stage-filling sets and Cameron Smith's AV choices make the stage pop and moves us efficiently from Manhattan to Vegas, creating strong visual pictures. And the three performers, Charles Wu, Gareth Davies and Sigrid Thornton, also give performances that are scaled up to the venue - the increasing passions betwen Wu and Davies as they argue through the finer points of detail are hysterical and yet emotionally engaing, with Thornton as the editor mdediating between the two of them. The three archetypes - Wu's entusiastic intern, Davies' prickly writer and Thornton's efortlessly powerful boss - are well deliniated and given space to have arias of pesonal expression.

The fourth performer on stage, musician/composer Maria Alfonsine, is where things get a little trickier. She provides a live jazzy soundtrack, pushing the show towards the 30s/40s newswroom comedies that this superficially sligtly resembles (though the finer points of journalistic ethics are somewhat more evolved than that model). The intention, aparent in program notes, to have her represent the person the essay is actually about never really seems fully thoght out - it's a concept that never really becomes staged in any real sense. Yes, she's there throughout, but there's never really a sense that her prescence has been thought out or makes any real sense beyond a directorial intention that isn't quite realised. The music itself is fine - it's the idea that it's meant to represent anything other than just mood and decoration that kinda falls apart.

This is still a fairly engrossing story, and the three performers are fine skilled performers. But I feel like the depths and nuances may have been better suited to a smaller more intimate venue, rather than being drawn to the flash and spectacle which the Ros Packer slightly demands.