Award winning Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan, whose last novel Mayflies was successfully adapted for television, brings his first play, The Ballad of Truman Capote, to premiere at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Already the subject of two films, Capote (2005) and Infamous (2006), the radical American novelist will now be the focus of a Scottish stage play that takes a very different angle to the movies.
It is 28th November 1966 in the Plaza Hotel, New York and Truman Capote, literary star and author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, is hosting his famous Black and White Ball. With the Vietnam War ongoing, the writer brings Washington powerbrokers, Hollywood stars, society hostesses, fashion editors and pop artists, poets and musical celebrities to the party of the century.
One hour before the ball begins, Capote holes up in his room for an hour. The Ballad of Truman Capote is the resulting monologue, a tragi-comical memory play depicting the highs and lows of the invented life and the price of fame.
Andrew O’Hagan, who also directs the play, said “As an author, Truman Capote caught something essential about the 20th century. I’ve always been fascinated by him. He was a great stylist, a courageous little human being, and a witness to some of the great events and personalities of the age. So I wanted to get him onstage. I want audiences to have an intimate hour with one of the most original, funny, and troubling characters of recent times. We live in the age of self-invention, and here he is — the Inventor of Self-Invention.”
Tickets on sale now: https://tickets.edfringe.com
Venue: The Space Upper, Niddry Street
4th-26th August at 18:05 (running time 55mins)
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 