Review: Actual Fact

The audi­ence arrived warm and will­ing to be enter­tained — and they were.

Actu­al Fact explored sto­ry telling. Not in a way that is gen­er­al­ly cel­e­brat­ed in our soci­ety — such as I’m an adven­tur­er, sportsper­son, a politi­cian — lis­ten to or read of my noble deeds and deep and mean­ing­ful thoughts plebs — and grow because of it.

Actu­al Fact explored the parts often left out of sto­ries that you or I could tell — the tedious and mun­dane facts of any jour­ney we may take. The sound of some­thing rolling, how an object appeared, where one was stand­ing, was the milk creamy or just stan­dard? So many facts to be estab­lished.

The pro­duc­tion team built a whole play out of infor­ma­tion usu­al­ly dis­card­ed as not to bore your mum or co-work­ers to tears when you’re regal­ing them of tales of your day at work or what you did on the week­end. I’m not sure how the sto­ry would have car­ried if not for the great use of sound though. It was very cool and very clever.

The three actors who played the char­ac­ters, who each took their tasks of estab­lish­ing facts quite seri­ous­ly, each brought a sense of humour to the stage that made their char­ac­ters all lik­able — you did form an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion and hoped they would not be killed off. The play has great val­ue because of the con­tent and the cast — if you are not a the­ater per­son, but would like to access a pro­duc­tion that would not speak down to you, and a play that would make the art from acces­si­ble to you — then Actu­al Fact is a good place to start.

Every­one has sto­ries to tell — impor­tant and bor­ing. If there was a les­son to take home from Actu­al Fact it could be that even the tini­est morsel of infor­ma­tion car­ries mean­ing.

Go see it.