Tru (play)

Tru
Written by	Jay Presson Allen
Characters	Truman Capote
Date premiered	December 14, 1989
Place premiered	Booth Theatre
Original language	English
Setting	New York City December 1975

Tru is a 1989 play by Jay Presson Allen, adapted from the words and works of Truman Capote.

Adapted from the words and works of Truman Capote, Tru is set in the writer's New York City apartment at 870 United Nations Plaza the week before Christmas 1975. An excerpt from Capote's infamous unfinished roman à clef, Answered Prayers, recently has been published in Esquire. Having recognized thinly veiled versions of themselves, Manhattan socialites such as Babe Paley and Slim Keith turn their backs on the man they once considered a close confidant. Alone and lonely, Capote — soothing himself with pills, vodka, cocaine, and chocolate truffles — muses about his checkered life and career in what is essentially a two-act monodrama.

There is one anachronism in the script. At one point Capote, talking about suicide, states he has stashed enough pills to stage his own Jonestown Massacre. The Jonestown Massacre did not occur until 1978, three years after the period portrayed in Tru.

After 11 previews, the Broadway production of Tru, directed by Allen, opened on December 14, 1989 at the Booth Theatre, where it ran for 297 performances. Robert Morse starred as Truman Capote.

In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich said, "Intentionally or not, Tru is a creep show: a hybrid of necrophilia and tame fan-magazine journalism that doesn't so much rekindle fascination with a troubled writer as reawaken the willies prompted by those disoriented talk-show appearances … that were the desperate final act of his career."

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