Elsinore, A Theatre Ensemble: The Lifespan of a Fact Review

Lori Rohr, Jamie Ewing, and Thomas Neumann

Elsinore Theatre Presents THE LIFESPAN OF A FACT Review - A Passionate Fight For What Is Fact and What Is True

TLDR: Up against a deadline to print an article, the author, the editor, and the fact checker butt heads in passionate disagreements about what parts need to stick to the facts and what can be embellished for adding color to the story. The Lifespan of A Fact is more a philosophical play asking this question and gives audiences something to ponder as they leave the theater.

Thomas Neumann, Jamie Ewing, Lori Rohr

Elsinore Digs Deep Into An Article

Surrounded by scraps of paper, remnants of take out meals, and throw pillows tossed haphazardly around the room, John (Jamie Ewing) sits on the couch in his pajamas eating a bowl of cereal. He’s sitting in a very pink living room with a small kitchenette on the back wall. There’s a lace coverlet on the sitting chair and a crucifix hanging above the door. Somehow this space doesn't seem to match the person sitting before us. As the pre-show continues, he seems to shake himself out of this funk and begins cleaning up and writing. 

Fast forward outside of this house. The projections in the windows change from looking out onto a yard and suburban street to a skyscraper window overlooking the city. Emily (Lori Rohr) sits at her editorial desk answering phone calls and barking directions while simultaneously writing emails and answering texts. She assigns Harvard graduate, Jim (Thomas Neumann) to be the fact checker of John’s article. This could be a swan song of a piece for the publication as it takes the suicide of a teenager and frames it as a larger human interest story and reflections about why Las Vegas has one of the highest suicide rates in the country.

But there’s one problem - the article isn’t 100% factual. Emily fixes her gaze on Jim with a steely, unmoved eye as Jim pulls out his heavily annotated, highlighted, page-marked copy of this article. He’s written a hundred pages of notes of things that can’t be proven as fact just from this 15 page essay. When Emily directs him to focus on what matters and get to the bottom of it with John, Jim finds the only way to do so is face to face and is soon invading John’s house in Vegas. This leads to a chaotic weekend where the three of them sit in this pressure cooker trying to get the story done by the printing deadline.

Thomas Neumann and Jamie Ewing

Fact vs. Truth

When you say something is true, isn’t it based on facts? When you say something is a fact, doesn’t that make it true? This becomes the entire crux of these three’s arguments. Does it matter the exact number of strip clubs in Las Vegas? Can you alter the number of deaths on a given day to give yourself a more poetic number? Were the bricks red or brown on the gazebo?

For Jim, it’s about what is factually correct. If you start bending facts, you never know what is true. 

For John, it’s about painting a picture of events. Facts don’t tell the full story, but the additions are what gives a story color and elevates it to a relatable piece.

For Emily, it’s about managing the risk of maybe not having 100% accurate facts, but still maintaining the publications literary integrity. 

All three have found themselves in these passionate throes to defend their individual stances and this article is the catalyst for all of it. Jim tries to get Emily to see that the article is riddled with inaccuracies. Emily tries to get Jim to not focus on details that don’t matter. John tries to get both of them to see data alone does not tell the full story and ruins the heart of the piece. 

They find themselves at an impasse about what this article should be and we feel the frustration running off each of them. 

Jamie Ewing and Lori Rohr

The After Party Thoughts

The cast of The Lifespan of a Fact does a great job of throwing their passion behind their arguments of what parts need to stick to the facts and where you need context to give color to the story. They find comedy in their hyperbolized characteristics and when they throw witty jabs back at each other. 

The delivery of their main arguments, however, felt very one note until the very end. It feels like we don’t move forward from arguing over the same two sentences of this article until the last 20min or so. We do get that dramatic moment of change when they all get it. There’s pauses and silences in their last reflections over the article, a stark difference to the heightened, emotional arguments they were having not two minutes ago. 

So if that was their intention - to create that clear difference in emotion - they succeeded. For this writer, there wasn’t enough of a difference between their different phases of arguing though or character development to draw me in and make me feel that ending moment was worth all the arguing.

For those that don’t like shows that are more philosophical or meant to be more thought-provoking, this might not be the show for you. However, for those that are interested in shows that explore language, journalistic integrity, and nuances between how people think, The Lifespan of a Fact would be a good fit for you.

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When

Now through May 4, 2025

Where

Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture

2936 N Southport Ave.

Chicago, IL 60657

Runtime: 90 minutes, no intermission

Tickets

$29+

Tickets can be purchased through the Athenaeum website

Photos

Aaron Reese Boseman

Find Allie and The After Party featured on Theatre in Chicago

CAST

Thomas Neumann (Jim)

Jamie Ewing (John)

Lori Rohr (Emily)

CREATIVE

Aaron Reese Boseman (Director)

Laura Courtney (Stage Manager)

Will Hughes (Set Design/Construction)

Quinn Chisenhall (Light Design)

Warren Levon (Sound Design)

DJ Douglass (Projection Design)