Finding Reliable Success in the Unreliable Narrator

The unreliable narrator has been simultaneously telling and dismantling tales at least as far back as Chaucer, but playwrights have been playing catch-up lately. Neil LaBute has turned the notion into a virtual cottage industry — one of his protagonists even describes himself as such. Aaron Sorkin featured a pair of them fact-checking each other in "The Farnsworth Invention," and David Hare described his interest in adapting "The Year of Magical Thinking" for the stage by explaining, "Whenever...