What are People Saying About it?

Reviews:

A preview article form the OSU Lantern Newspaper.

Who's the Playwright?

Truman Capote

Truman Capote(1924-1984) was born in New Orleans to parents with little aptitude for child rearing. As a youngster he frequently lived in Monroeville, Alabama, with his mother's older cousins, one of whom, Sook, became a devoted comrade. In the 1940s and 50s his short stories and novels, including Breakfast at Tiffany's, firmly established him as a star in the literary firmament. His "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood (1966) was widely praised for its detailed and innovative reporting of the Clutter family murders. In his final decade he enjoyed celebrity as a witty and gossipy guest on TV talk shows but his publications slowed to a trickle, and his creativity was hampered by dependence on
alcohol and prescription drugs.&

Play Notes

A generation of younger Americans unfamiliar with Truman Capote, and older Americans who may recall him only as a charming, gossipy TV personality, have been reminded of his literary fame and personal idiosyncrasies by not one but two recent feature films: Capote (2005) and Infamous (2006). Both dramatize the period when Capote was writing In Cold Blood about the brutal killing of a Kansas family in 1959. In Cold Blood (1966), which Capote labeled a new literary genre, the nonfiction novel, was perhaps the apex of his literary career and, sadly, also marked the beginning of the decline of his writing career.

But before Capote was known for reportage, he had established himself as a talented writer of short fiction and as a superior prose stylist. Beginning in the late 1940- when magazines like Harper's Bazaar still printed quality fiction-he published classic short stories such as "Miriam," "Children on Their Birthdays," and "A Christmas Memory." Several stories reflect his childhood in Monroeville, Alabama, a small town where his mother's family lived. The town, as fictionalized by Capote in stories and in his novel The Grass Harp, is peopled with gullible but loving folk as well as with tightfisted survivors, and he mixes satire and sentiment in portraying the town. Typically, the narrative character, as with Buddy in "A Christmas Memory" and "The Thanksgiving Visitor," is a youngster, or an adult reminiscing about his experiences. Beneath the comic veneer of the stories lie fragile relationships-for instance, the deep friendship of Buddy and Miss Sook that is threatened by disapproving relatives-but the fragility also derives from changes inevitably brought by time. To reach maturity, the boy Buddy must weather adolescence and adulthood, and Sook, despite her eternally youthful spirit, must submit to her own mortality. Such passages will demand more fortitude than facing stuffy, disapproving relatives or a bullying boy like Odd Henderson. It is when an adult perspective is revealed, as in the elegiac conclusion of "A Christmas Memory," that the narrative's tone changes from laughter to tears, from remembered joy to present heartbreak.

Ironically, when Capote wrote for the stage, as he did with a play version of The Grass Harp and a musical version of the story, "House of Flowers," the results met with scant critical or commercial success, but when his stories are read or recited aloud they are crowd pleasers. The difference is one of voice. The distinctive voice he created through his deft prose was lost when he translated it to lines to be spoken by actors. Capote's own speaking voice produced a rather thin nasal sound, but the artist's voice he created through his carefully forged sentences is one that woos the listener's ears and that still charms and entertains.

By Jim Bailey, Dramaturge

Selected Production History:

CATCO 1989 - 1990 Resident & Touring Productions
CATCO 1990 - 1991 Resident & Touring Productions
CATCO 1991 - 1992 Resident & Touring Productions
CATCO 1992 - 1993
CATCO 1994 - 1995
CATCO 1995 - 1996