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.