Palm Beach Dramaworks audiences have seen New York-based actor Rob Donohoe many times before, in such diverse plays as Exit the King, The History Boys and The Pitmen Painters. But they have never seen anything quite like his transformation as manic-depressive gay Southern writer Truman Capote in the one-man show, Tru.
Donohoe’s acceptance of the role was the condition that allowed producing artistic director William Hayes to add the play to his season schedule. But the actor was initially taken aback by the offer.
“I thought at first, ‘Who would cast me in this role?’ I didn’t really see myself in it,” Donohoe concedes. “But I went home and I looked on the internet, looked at pictures of Tru, looked at pictures of me. I listened to him speaking on several YouTube clips and I tried doing the voice myself. And I thought, ‘Actually, I can do this rather easily.’
“We have very similar facial features. And we’re not that far apart in age. There were enough positives and there was enough of a challenge, and producers just don’t offer you this kind of job very often,” he says, replaying his decision process. “So I jumped on it.”
Rather than direct the play himself, Hayes tapped Lynnette Barkley, the choreographer-turned-director who had staged the company’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses two seasons ago.
“From my history as a director, you wouldn’t instantly think of me for ‘Tru,’” notes Barkley. “But I love a challenge and this certainly is one. How to make this interesting and accessible and funny and emotionally compelling to an audience. So, OK, I’m in.”
Unlike so many one-person shows, Jay Presson Allen’s Tru has a concrete dramatic context. Set at Christmastime, 1975, when Capote has just published an excerpt of his bitchy and dishy Answered Prayers and was quickly ostracized by his society crowd. So he sits alone in his United Nations Plaza apartment and sifts through his life, skewering the boldface celebrities and socialites who have abandoned him.
Donohoe too will be alone – onstage – facing the challenge of his first one-man show. “I know a lot of people don’t like them,” he says of the much-maligned genre. “I think part of the problem is people think, ‘Well, I’m going to get tired watching this same person for an hour and a half.’ It can get pretty boring listening to the same subject for the whole evening. Or if they’re just whining. But Truman Capote was known as quite a raconteur and quite a party guest. He was always entertaining. So he sort of lends himself to this format, because he pretty much held court anytime he went to a party.”
“I’m not really a mimic. I’ve never done impersonations before. That’s not my thing. But I’m a great observer of human nature,” says Donohoe. “I find it quite interesting to put all those layers together and see if I can create this completely other character that’s unlike myself. I think that’s what really intrigued me about Truman.”
Unlike Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde, who were also showcased in popular monodramas, theatergoers know Capote’s distinctive high-pitched voice from his many appearances on television and in movies.
“He had a slight lisp and an underbite and a lazy tongue,” explains Donohoe. “People mistook him for a child. Until he was about 35 years old, he looked about 12. He was just a wisp of a guy, so he looked like a little boy and he dressed the part. I think he figured out how to make his way in the world by using that, drawing people in and seducing them that way.
“Then as he got older and that cuteness wasn’t there, he started developing more of an edge and a little bit of bitterness, trying to deal with that change. So there’s a lot of layers that I’m finding that I can add onto to create this character.”
What drew Barkley to this one-man play were the ideas beneath the biography. “This one works, I think because of the universal themes. We all make choices in our lives based on our human needs. We all need attention, acceptance and appreciation. The things we don’t usually get. All of those things were not there in Capote’s childhood. So he made choices in his life to get away from that and then he found this society world where suddenly everybody was giving him attention and affection. They appreciated his wit and his intelligence. They accepted his homosexuality at a time when it wasn’t always accepted.
“So suddenly he had all this, but we all have this self-destruct button. Whether he did it out of his ego, he really didn’t think he was worthy, or he was saying, ‘Do these people really love me or am I just the circus clown that is amusing them?’,” self-destruct he did.
In the play, Allen captures both Capote’s humor and his dark side. “There’s a reason why all of these people were drawn to Truman Capote,” says Barkley. “He was really compelling and interesting and fun. The show was funnier than I expected it to be. That was the surprise when I saw the show on Broadway.”
On the other hand, Tru also explores the writer’s underlying morbidity. “The man is contemplating suicide, an idea that has been in him since his mother did the same,” adds Barkley. “Even his self-deprecating humor is shaded by that, I think.”
Donohoe is a voracious researcher in preparation for a role, particularly if the character has his own body of work. “I needed to find out everything I could about Truman Capote,” he says. “I started by reading his own works. I decided to do them in order, so I started with ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms’ – his first published novel. Then I went back a little bit and read his collection of short stories. I then read Gerald Clarke’s biography of him. And ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and ‘In Cold Blood.’ I read everything I could get my hands on.
“I’ve just finished reading George Plimpton’s book, which was incredibly enlightening. It’s an outsider’s view of who he was and how people felt about him. That’s the great stuff that any actor needs,” says Donohoe. “You want to find out what the character thinks about himself, what the playwright thinks of him, what other people say about him and how he reacts to the whole thing.”
Asked if he learned anything that was unexpected, Donohoe says, “The thing I found out about him that was a surprise to me was how much he loved to lie. Everyone knew he lied, he just made things up because they sounded good or they were entertaining.”
Donohoe was wary of viewing other actors’ take on Capote, but he ultimately found Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance helpful. “He does a wonderful impersonation, but he does Truman’s actual voice, which was very breathy and small. I thought, ‘OK, this works great for film, but it will never play on a stage.’ The back row has to hear it. So I’ve worked with a coach, trying to come up with a sound that reminds people of Truman and has an element of that strange voice, but also can be heard and understood from every seat in the house.
“I don’t want his voice to just come off as irritating,” Donohoe emphasizes. “If he talks like he did for the whole two hours, people are going to run out the back door. It would grate on people’s nerves.”
Regardless of how different one is from Capote, Donohoe says, “I think everyone can identify a little bit, sure. I think anyone who has done or said something in their life that they later regretted, because it changed the way people perceived them, I think everyone can empathize with that.”
The bottom line for Donohoe is how compelling a character Capote is. “He is one of the most famous writers in America, arguably one of our best writers. I think most people have an idea of who he was and how he wrote, but they haven’t dug deeply enough to find out who the person was, where he came from and why he did what he did,” says the actor. “I think a lot of people have made assumptions about him based on his TV persona and he’s a lot deeper than that.”
TRU, Palm Beach Dramaworks, 201 Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Dec. 2, 2016-Jan. 1, 2017. $66. 561-514-4042.