THEATRE
Written by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon
Farrell, by Melbourne Theatre Company
At Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, until 3 July 2021
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ****
This review is published only on this blog. KH
Steve Mouzakis, Karl Richmond
The Lifespan of a Fact is bound to trigger arguments about the vices and virtues of literary non-fiction and the value of fact and truth in this purportedly non-fiction literary form that demands the same poetic licence as fiction writing.
Creative non-fiction colours and enhances a true story by imbuing it with literary flourishes and making it a more palatable story. From where I’m standing, if you don’t use facts, i.e. empirical truth, then it’s no longer non-fiction.
Evidently, facts don’t appeal to lots of people because they are dry and require effort to process. We need to be fed facts wrapped in a story to which we can relate. This is what myths and religious stories such as the Bible provide, and now, it seems, so does literary non-fiction.
