Tru (play)

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

Background

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 a 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.