CHUCK YATES IS A TOUR DE FORCE
AS TRUMAN CAPOTE
Based on photos and video clips I’ve seen of Truman Capote, Chuck Yates has truly captured the successful-but-troubled author in Desert Ensemble Theatre’s production of Tru, a two-act monologue which proves that the proudly gay author was even more interesting than the characters he created for Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Grass Harp and In Cold Blood. With the same receding hairline, Mr. Yates also has some of the classic Capote gestures down cold—taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes—and there are times when he looks eerily just like Mr. Capote–without the aid of latex jowls or a fake double chin. The show opens with a man facing upstage talking on the phone with the handset against his ear. When he eventually turns to the audience, it’s like a star’s entrance. We know that this IS Truman Capote.
We are in a Upper East Side apartment, designed by Thomas L. Valach, that could only belong to Tru. With 10-feet-high windows looking through elegant transparent drapes at United Nations Plaza, complete with a view of the East River and a large Christmas tree, it looks expensive. Rather than decorated, the walls display things that are meaningful to the writer; a few pieces of sculpture, a large fan, several items of original artwork, numerous photos, and seemingly hundreds of books stacked on shelves and tucked under furniture. The décor is as iconoclastic as the apartment’s owner.
The precocious Capote, who was born Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1924, craved success, stardom and access to the trappings of elite society from a very early age. And he achieved that. But now it’s Christmas Eve, 1975, and Esquire Magazine has just printed a chapter from the novel-still-in-progress, Answered Prayers, which was to depict, Proust-like, American society via thinly fictionalized versions of some of the wealthiest and most fashionable women in the world. The reaction was as scandalous as the article: Tru was shunned by high-class society—an overnight outcast. Real-estate investor Jerome Zipkin said, “Truman is ruined. He will no longer be received socially anywhere. What’s more—those who receive him will no longer be received.” But as Capote asks in the play, “Didn’t those people understand they were talking to an artist? Isn’t all fair in war and art?” Act II is Christmas day, with a lonely Tru battling a hangover after doing coke and booze at Studio 54.
Heartbreakingly pretty as a boy and young man, Truman Capote was an odd creature in his later years, a diminutive man with the high-pitched, nasally voice who battled drug and alcohol addiction as well as bouts of depression. In Jay Presson Allen’s 1989 Broadway play—for which Robert Morse won his second Tony—it is this frail, eccentric author who regales us with one tale after another while drowning himself in vodka. Yates makes the character his own, even though the evening is a series of peaks and valleys as Mrs. Allen patched together the monologue from “the words and works of Truman Capote.” Indeed, after a few more phone conversations, he activates a recorder and the rest of the evening’s dialogue seems to be for this recording. What Allen does capture in her play is Capote’s voracious wit, and although often drenched in self-pity, the voice that emerges is more than just the ramblings from your average unreliable narrator. With skillful direction by David Youse, it’s an evening of conversation that never lags.
Capote is vulnerable when reads from his short story, “A Christmas Memory,” and when he recounts his parents divorcing early in his life, causing him to move to New York, adopting the step-father’s surname, Capote. He is then justifiably proud when he mentions that he wrote his first complete short story when he was eight and was paid for published stories when he turned eleven. More coloration comes when we listen to him on the phone, playing the character of an eccentric author versus his more honest sharing with the tape recorder.
Although there are only a couple of cues, Jason Smith’s lighting design works well for the setting, but then comes to life in a dramatic moment when Capote moves from one part of the apartment to another and is lit in a solo spotlight at each destination. Andrew M. Edwards’ sound design is not only fun but directional and efficient. When Capote puts a cassette tape into a stereo and listens to a bit of music, the sound realistically emanates from the stereo. The ringing multiline rotary telephone (props by Tessa Gregory-Walker and Mr. Yates) and the voices on speaker also sound like they are coming from the onstage phone, not broadcast from offstage. And speaking of phones, there are several times Capote puts the calls on speakerphone—the voices of the women he speaks to were recorded by Lorna Luft, Bets Malone, Valerie Armstrong and Lucie Arnaz.
As with the current Fat Ham at Dezart Performs and The Light in the Piazza at CV Rep, Desert Ensemble Theatre’s Tru is one of those works of rare excellence for The Valley. What a shame that this top-drawer production has such a short run. Every aspect of Tru is not to be missed.
photos by Tara Howard
Tru
Desert Ensemble Theatre
Camelot Theaters in the Palm Springs Cultural Center
2300 East Baristo Road in Palm Springs
Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2 & 7:30; Sun at 2
ends on February 2, 2025
for tickets ($40), call 760.565.2476 or visit Desert Ensemble
