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Stage For this actor, amazing but 'Tru'
The American Stage revival of Tru stars a relative unknown who so impressed the play's author that they have big plans for the play.
By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 9, 2003
[Publicity photo.]
One of the challenges of playing Truman Capote is to be true to the author’s quirks, his high voice and mannerisms without turning the performance into a parody, says actor Tom Frye.
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Tom Frye sometimes must feel as if he has been plucked from obscurity by the theater gods. At 55, Frye has spent his career mainly as an actor and director in Wichita, Kan. He has a regional reputation for playing character roles like Melvin P. Thorpe in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas or Ali Hakim in Oklahoma! or one of the zanies in Greater Tuna.
Two years ago, Frye starred in a Wichita production of Tru, the one-man show on Truman Capote. Afterward, he sent a note to the play's author, Jay Presson Allen, and her husband, Lewis Allen, a Broadway producer, thanking them for licensing him to produce the play and expressing his fondness for it.
The Allens responded by asking for a videotape of his performance. After seeing it, they got back in touch with Frye and said they loved his performance.
"A week later, I was in New York in their Park Avenue apartment, rehearsing with Jay for two days," Frye said. "Finally, she said to Lewis, 'I want to tour with him, and I want to do an off-Broadway production.' "
Now a revival of Tru, starring Frye and directed by the playwright, will open at American Stage Friday for a 10-show run in preparation for a possible New York production and national tour.
"This guy is wonderful," Mrs. Allen said of Frye. "The production is happening because of him. He was good. It was simple as that."
Frye has a tough act to follow. Robert Morse originated the role in 1989 and won both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for his performance as the author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany's. But the playwright, who directed Frye in a second production of Tru in Wichita last year, has no doubt about him matching up well against Morse.
"If I didn't think this production was going to be as good or better than the first one, I wouldn't be doing it," she said. "It was time for a revival."
Mrs. Allen, 80, has written some of the classics of American theater and movies. She adapted Muriel Spark's novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for stage and film. Her screenwriting credits include Marnie, Cabaret, Prince of the City, Deathtrap and Travels with My Aunt. Lewis Allen has produced many Broadway hits, including Tru, Annie, Master Class and My One and Only.
Tru, set during the 1975 Christmas season, finds Capote in his Manhattan penthouse, suffering over the sour reaction to the savage portraits of his high society friends in Answered Prayers, his never-to-be-finished roman a clef that had just been excerpted in Esquire. It was a turning point for Capote, who died in 1984, as he began the downward spiral from literary celebrity to the alcoholic and addict who made a fool of himself on talk shows.
"As gregarious as Capote was, he was also very lonely, and it's a solitary piece where he's revealing himself to the audience, which breaks that fourth wall," Frye said. "Jay has written it so beautifully that you feel like you're sitting in the living room with him, that you're his best friend and he's confiding in you. It makes it so warm and personal."
Capote became famous for dishing dirt with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. His high-pitched voice and openly gay manner became the stuff of impersonators, including Frye, who once played Capote in a show in Ohio.
"It's almost difficult not to parody him," Frye said. "He was a parody. He had this weird little voice. He was not like anybody else, and he didn't care."
Frye never saw Morse perform Tru live but did take a look at a tape of a PBS telecast of the play. "I stayed away from it as much as I could because I didn't want to mimic him doing Capote," he said.
Morse's performance was an uncanny evocation of Capote, but the actor had his doubts in the beginning. "Bobby was very, very frightened of the part," said Mrs. Allen. "It was kind of rough getting him into it once we decided on him. He kept trying to back out. But I knew almost instantly how good he'd be."
Frye thinks Capote's downfall had something to do with the reception to In Cold Blood, his best-selling account of the murder of a Kansas farm family in 1959. The actor read the book as a high school student in Wichita in the 1960s.
"My theory is that In Cold Blood was his magnum opus," he said. "It didn't get the critical acclaim he thought it deserved. He didn't win the Pulitzer, which I think he desperately wanted. I think he just spent himself on In Cold Blood, physically destroyed himself, and never recovered."
The Tru tryout at American Stage came about through Sonny Everett, a onetime Tampa insurance broker who is now a Broadway producer and was familiar with the theater. He is a producer of the revival along with Lewis Allen.
"We won't make any money there," Mrs. Allen said "That's not the point. The point is just to get it together and get it presentational, and not to lose any money."
The Allens had wanted to mount Tru off-Broadway in 2001, but that was put off in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Now the plan is to play New York in the next year or so and then go on tour.
"We'll bring it in here (New York), probably for a fairly short run, then do a really good road production. The whole point is a national tour," Mrs. Allen said.
And Frye is enjoying every minute of the ride, such as his visit to the Allens' villa in Italy. "There I was, swimming with Lewis in their indoor-outdoor pool, talking with this three-time Tony Award-winning producer about Montgomery Clift, Sean Connery and Alfred Hitchcock, friends of the Allens, on this glorious Italian hillside. . . . Quick, I thought, somebody get the video camera and record this moment. It's all been pretty incredible."
Frye has taught theater, and he used to tell his students not to let their hearts get broken by the inevitable rejection. Now his improbable casting in Tru bears him out.
"I always told my kids that things are meant to happen when it's time to happen," he said. "I don't know if you want to call it fate, but I've been very blessed with this, and if nothing else happens, it's been a wonderful experience. I have made two incredible friends in the Allens. That friendship means more to me than this show going on to bigger and better things. And if it does go on, great, I'm ready for it and excited."
Mrs. Allen, for her part, seconds the mutual admiration -- "He's absolutely darling" -- but said that friendship had nothing to do with putting a more or less unknown actor in a major revival of her play.
"If he had been as good as he was, and we went down to Wichita and he was a little son of a b--, we still would've cast him. You just take talent where you find it."
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PREVIEW: Tru by Jay Presson Allen opens Friday and runs through Jan. 19 at American Stage. Performances are 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday. Tickets: $20-$28. (727) 823-7529.
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