Complacent audiences conflate story with truth. Backed by history and storytelling rules, it’s a generally acceptable expectation (there’s a murder, the butler did it, he eventually confesses); it’s why reversals that upend the very foundations of storytelling remain so effective. However, in reality, truth is a flawed continuum for which story is an imperfect stand-in: this is where Steven Dietz’s Fiction thrives. In this Tipping Point Theatre production directed by James R. Kuhl, the viewer is guided along an unusual journey, in which the complex relationship between storyteller and audience is illuminated with intellectual curiosity and visceral connection through the lens of one marriage.
The rollicking squabble between Walter (Aaron H. Alpern) and Linda (Julia Glander) that opens the play turns out to be their first meeting; the scene is followed by present-day narration that succinctly introduces a broken-timeline structure and well-deployed editorializing. In the present, they have been married twenty years, both have since become published novelists of fluctuating acclaim, and they have just learned that Linda has an inoperable brain tumor and mere weeks to live. Among her last wishes are for her husband to read her private journals after she dies — and to read his in return, with the time she has left. Together, Glander and Alpern cultivate a uniquely quirky rapport that speaks to their shared competitive profession and highly refined respect for each other’s privacy; both are possessed of warmth and wit that bring wry humor and vexing immediacy to a loving but fractious relationship tested by strife.
As writers, Walter and Linda’s world is what they make of it, a concept that extends to their surroundings. Dennis Crawley’s radiating stone-paved set eschews literalism, creating a pleasant and fitting backdrop without representing anything specific. The setting notably includes liberal use of floor-to-ceiling panels, upon which lighting designer Joel Klain boldly splays luminous moods as gentle but impactful as Quintessa Gallinat’s contemplative soundtrack. As with the universal set, costume design by Colleen Ryan-Peters relies on a primary look for each character, similarly tactile and absent scene specificity. Among the few items that are lent permanence are the journals (by properties designer Natividad Salgado), which tell stories as unchanging as the events they recount seem to be malleable.
Dietz entrenches his characters in their creative mindsets, weaving a tricky and candidly unreliable narrative, with dialogue as thick as prose. Kuhl and company answer with self-described snobbish characters that gamely invite the viewer to rise to their level, and in so doing reveal a reality in which “what happened” is intriguingly subjective and unknowable. The crux of the matter here is Abby (Alysia Kolascz), whose leading role in Walter’s journals is a shocking discovery for Linda. A staff member at a writer’s retreat he attended years before, Abby’s subsequent presence in nearly every volume drives a rift between the two, forcing both to pick at the division of truth, memory, and representation. Kolascz wisely plays down the pleasant but aloof Abby, leaving ample room for inference that drives the intrigue; together, the company slowly arrives at the importance of her story, coupling emotional payoff with satisfying exegesis.
This Fiction proves an intelligent and demanding examination of its academic questions of truth and memoir; it is also a tragic tale that digs into the viewer with gripping personal stakes. The show’s success lies in the strength of the combination: setting off existential topics with touching performances, the medium truly becomes the message.