Athasha Lyonnais starts the week with the demise of a brilliant writer…
Tru is an often funny, sometimes meandering one-and-a-half-hander (more on that later) running at the Menier Chocolate Factory, following a successful off-broadway revival of the 1989 one act play about Truman Capote. Set in the troubled later years of his career, the theatre space has been astonishingly transformed by set designer Paul Farnsworth into Capote’s excessively decorated living room, as he attempts to navigate Christmas following a dramatic ostracism from his social circle.
Following the whirlwind success of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Capote’s career stalled as he tried to write what he saw as his masterpiece, Answered Prayers. Chapters that Esquire magazine published early were full of thinly veiled versions of his (extremely wealthy) friends, who duly filed out of his life, leaving him as we see him as the play starts, wandering around his apartment, leaving voice memos for his biographer, and drinking extravagantly.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson does a good job of showing Capote in the state he’d probably never like to be remembered; verging on self-parody, no longer famous for writing as much as he is famous for being famous, and desperately afraid of being alone. He rattles off one-liners, tells stories from his life, and Ferguson is a talented enough actor to make the whole thing stink of Capote’s insecurity, so you don’t mind that the plot does feel in places like you’re having a famous person’s life described to you.
Less successful is the unusual decision by director Rob Ashford to have Broadway star Charlotte d’Amboise wander through the play as ‘The Swan’, dressed like a ballerina-cum-socialite who isn’t given a lot to do here. Although, in a play that catalogues the disappointing third act of a writer who, by the end of the scant 90-minute runtime, also felt like he was squandering his potential, the irony is at least fun to think about.
And I was seeking out news I could believe…
In Tracey Scott Wilson’s 2003 play, The Story (National Theatre), we are asked to consider the origin of a story, how the facts are gathered and what that ending may be when considering the various narratives. Or in journalistic language to think about the who, what, where, when and why with ‘why’ being the most important question to answer. We see a go-getting, young black reporter Yvonne (Letitia Wright) who, much to her displeasure, has been shifted to write stories specifically about the Black community when her desire is to be up, front and centre of the main news reports. Even having a boss, Jeff (Wolf Scolding) as a secret lover, does nothing to give her what she passionately wants.
Off she goes to land en exclusive, a story that will get her noticed and seal the deal with editor Pat (Lorraine Toussaint). Tim Dunn (Josh Goulding), a white teacher has been shot in a run-down neighbourhood, and according to her source, the culprit may not be an obvious suspect. Anna Fleischle’s design of a basketball court is a neat idea, the opening tip-off in this game snapping into an energy and pace that is probably exactly like director Clint Dyer wants, the constant dynamic plays in a match. The style is sharp and informational and although the play was written over twenty years ago that style is far more indicative of today’s 24-hour news cycle where news moves in seconds which also means there is enormous pressure to be first with a story. News after all is also a game of winners and losers.
And therein lies the challenge for a theatrical production. Moving the story along is one thing but narrating at pace requires a lot of your audience. By the end of the first act I struggled to understand what point we had reached in the story. Nevertheless, despite my style misgivings the play does strike a chord of how stories originate, all the hard graft that follows to verify what journalists have heard and been told and when that money moment is finally reached, to go live.
Tru – www.menierchocolatefactory.com
The Story – www.nationaltheatre.org.uk