Theatre in Review: The Lifespan of a Fact (Studio 54) Daniel Radcliffe, Cherry Jones, and Bobby Cannavale make such a delightfully oddball trio that for the longest time you might not notice that The Lifespan of a Fact, a comedy about the editing of a magazine article, could benefit from a dramaturg -- the theatrical equivalent of an editor -- armed with a blue pencil. Jones is Emily, editor of a major publication along the lines of The Atlantic, who is determined to get a much-admired piece -- about the suicide of a young man in Las Vegas -- into her next issue by hook or by crook. Emily is one of the last great defenders of printed prose. Displaying a photo of "our beloved production facility" in Kankakee, where the magazine goes to print, she proudly notes, "They do everyone -- us, Heart, Condé Nast, Time Inc., Simon and Schuster," adding, with palpable regret, "The ones that are left." Her eyes glaze over as she discusses a lackluster feature about Congressional spouses, the sort of banal time-waster that keeps the publication afloat. And she can do incandescent fury with the best of them, whether dealing with a fact-checker who has gone rogue or a writer who insists that he sometimes bends his facts in pursuit of deeper truths. (Each of her speeches is delivered in that unforgettable voice, a cocktail of bourbon and honey, with just a little sand tossed in, for a touch of grit.) And, captivated by a beautiful piece of writing, she cocks her head to one side and assumes a look of pure serenity, and all seems right with the world. As Jim, an intern at the magazine who is given the special assignment of checking the story in question, Daniel Radcliffe creates a quivering mass of fear and ambition, hilariously aware of his lack of importance. Engaging in rapid-fire conversation with Emily, he is desperate to please, even when offering up a curriculum vitae that consists of little more than a few contributions to the Harvard Crimson. His increasingly nervous correspondence with the author of the article -- each email going through revision after revision -- is a prime source of amusement; if there's a faux pas to be made, Jim is your man. Once he takes on the project, however, he assumes a terrier-like intensity, whether displaying a set of notes that towers over the original text or, in the play's best speech, furiously defending the primacy of facts over artistic expression, insisting that "when the blogs and the fan sites and Twitter and 4chan and Reddit and whatever in the whole insane Internet...start tearing you down brick by brick," the piece will be dismissed as a mass of lies. He delivers these blistering words to Cannavale's John, the author, about whom we are told, "David Foster Wallace called him one of America's most significant living writers." If John is capable of playing fast and loose with certain details -- none of which, it should be noted, materially alter the point of his story -- he can be amusingly hairsplitting about other matters: For example, do not -- ever -- call his work "an article." He treats all editorial personnel as so many bugs to be squashed, but his remarkable sangfroid rapidly melts when he finds his living room invaded by interlopers, both of whom want to haggle with him over a multitude of details. Even when fielding some of the play's weakest arguments -- including his insistence that the mother of the dead youth thoroughly approves of the text -- Cannavale gives John plenty of swagger derived from his skill at intimidating everyone else in the room. The play is something of an oddball project, too, a boulevard comedy of ideas based on the book of the same name, which documents the drawn-out negotiation between writer John D'Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal over a piece D'Agata contributed to The Believer magazine. (It had already been dropped by Harper's over issues related to fact-checking.) That it took three playwrights -- Jeremy Kareken, David Murrell, and Gordon Farrell to cobble together this thin, if usually amusing and sometimes stimulating, effort is something of a surprise, especially since its portrayal of the magazine-publishing industry could use a fact-checker. How likely is it that a national magazine would begin the vetting process two or three business days before shipping to the printer -- especially a piece by a writer who, Emily notes, has been known to fancy up the truth? Has it been edited? Copyedited? (One thinks not, given Jim's interactions with John.) Is there even a layout? Even more slapdash is the device the playwrights use to land Jim in John's living room. And the climactic action, an all-night editing session featuring all three characters -- which must be completed by eight in the morning so that Emily can tell the presses to roll -- makes no sense: How can printing begin if she is sitting in Nevada with a new set of edits? It's a tribute to Leigh Silverman's buoyant direction -- she has always been a dab hand at comedy -- and the delightful contributions of the three stars that most of these issues don't start nagging at one until after the play is over. Nevertheless, they are likely to color your experience if you drop in at Studio 54. Certain journalist friends and acquaintances have been outraged by The Lifespan of a Fact, calling it a slap in the face at a time when the President has done everything in his power to degrade the press, but the play strikes me as too light-minded to cause any real concern. And, of course, writers from Lillian Hellman to James Grey have been found out for coloring their narratives; as Jim makes clear, a media under siege must be ever more vigilant about safeguarding the public's trust, lest it give aid and comfort to its enemies. A certain amount has been made of the fact that The Lifespan of a Fact is the first Broadway show with an all-female design team, and they have provided a slick, fast-moving production that is thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the script. Mimi Lien's set design contrasts the shiny, sterile white Lucite magazine offices with John's dumpy Vegas digs, which he shared with his late mother. The designer has made plenty of room for Lucy Mackinnon's amusing projections of texts and email communications; Jim's online photo portrait is easily the production's funniest sight gag. Jen Schriever's lighting cannily reshapes the early scenes with geometrical blocks of color, and, in the Nevada scenes, she provides several fine time-of-day looks. Palmer Hefferan's sound design includes voiceover sequences, birdsong, metal rock pouring out of a laptop, and her own original percussive music. The Lifespan of a Fact is filled with stray details -- John's relationship with his mother, his Roman Catholicism, and a photo on Emily's desk that she angrily declines to discuss -- which makes one wonder if earlier drafts contained fuller portraits of the characters. In any case, this is the kind of show Broadway used to host regularly -- a thin, if laugh-getting, comedy hoisted to no small degree by its cast and creative team. Even if it disappoints, the cast is something to see: Late in the evening, reading a passage from the story, Jones notes that the young man paused for forty-eight seconds before leaping. She then offers a pause of approximately that length, giving rise to a profoundly hushed silence. Not every actor can do that while closely holding an audience's attention. And that, I can say without reservation, is a fact. -- David Barbour 
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