INTERVIEW 

Steven Dietz’ “Fiction” is the exploration of a marriage and the privacy issues that can arise in one’s life and work.

“It’s a complex, subtle story about a married couple who are novelists,” said actor Dennis Parlato, “a story of unfaithfulness and faithfulness, about what’s really important in relationships and what isn’t.

“If we do our job, the audience will be able to take a fresh look at their own lives, how little facts matter when you’ve created your own history and mythology.”

Parlato plays Michael Waterman, a writer who set out early in his career to create the great American novel.

He makes fun of those who write novels expressly for the hope that they’ll be turned into a movie, but eventually turns into one of those and so decides to become the best hack novelist there is.

His wife Linda, Parlato said, is probably the better writer.

“She’s a writer who in her 20s wrote an important book and has never been able to match it,” said actress Amy Warner, “something like Harper Lee, who wrote ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’”

The Watermans have a full and rich relationship, but she finds out that she’s ill and doesn’t have much longer to live. She makes a deal with her husband: She will let him read her diaries after she is gone if she can read his before she goes.

But as she pores over his journals, she discovers that the truth is often distorted, that Michael has created a journal that reflects something other than his real life.

“These people are smart,” Warner said. “It’s fun to be in Steven Dietz’s plays because it makes you feel smart. The dialogue is smart and the characters say witty and elegant things.”

“It’s a little bit of a tearjerker,” Parlato said, “but it’s not sentimental.”

how to go
WHO: “Fiction” by Steven Dietz.
WHERE: Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, 1127 Vine Street, Cincinnati.
WHEN: Feb. 3-18.
COST: $32 adults, $29 students and seniors, $16 children ages 12 and under.
MORE INFO: (513) 421-3555; cincyetc.com.

A version of this story originally ran in the Go! section of the JournalNews, Hamilton, Ohio.