The Truman Capote Talk Show

• Written & Performed by Bob Kingdom
• Directed by Kevin Knight
• Fringe First winner 1993

SYNOPSIS:

There are four stages to American celebrity. The first and last are both "Who is Truman Capote?"...

Truman Capote - social butterfly, gossipmonger and faded novelist - is brought back from the dead in Bob Kingdom's brilliant one-man show, dropping names until those names drop him. Never lapsing into biography or lecture, this piece brings the later middle of the twentieth century into sharp focus through Capote's slightly jaded eyes.

Elvis, Camus, Frost, Marilyn, Thurber, Gore Vidal; all bit parts in the world Truman Capote moved through. The slightly seedy glamour of Breakfast at Tiffany's and the intelligence of its author shine through the script, bringing out the tragedy threaded through Capote's humour.

Capturing the man and his times despite the Capote estate forbidding any direct quotation is no easy task, but Kingdom succeeds with ease. His performance is scarily accurate; the wardrobe, the mannerisms, the camp, acerbic humour is precise. But this is so much more than impersonation, bringing a man who faded from view, from the fame he craved, as the world lost interest, back into the spotlight he deserved - or at least needed.

Reviews:

"Mr Kingdom is at once paying homage and lamenting loss... he grapples with the mystery and tragedy of genius and its undoing. For the actor, the occasion is a tour de force; for the audience, much to savour and to reflect upon" (New York Times)

"Creates new interest in a man of whom everyone was thoroughly tired by the time he died in 1984." (New York Daily News)

"I knew Truman and I can only tell you the impersonation is hair-raising... Doing obscene, lizard-like things with his tongue, sipping his Stoli with a twist, Mr Kingdom keeps you enthralled with this... by re-creating the style, elegance and poetic tragedy of Truman Capote, Mr Kingdom, in one of the crowning achievements of the acting profession, has created new poetry of his own." (New York Observer)

"Kingdom lets you understand Capote's wit and sarcasm, his lofty cynicism and camp posing as the defences of a man concealing vulnerabilities. The camp comedy of Kingdom's beautifully gauged and eloquent performance underlines the nature of Capote's dilemma." (Evening Standard)

"Go straight to this show" (The Guardian)

Truman Capote Talk Show - Biographies Bob Kingdom Bob Kingdom grew up in Cardiff, South Wales. Like Dylan Thomas he lived in an Anglicised Welsh environment marked by a tension between two cultures. From here comes a reworking of the English language under the rhythm of Welsh cadences with which Thomas himself was able to colonise the words of the English to surprise, startle and hypnotise. From an early age Bob Kingdom was himself captured by words and language. As a small boy he won literary competitions and distinguished himself in amateur dramatics (amazing adult colleagues with mimicry and an ability to play exceedingly old gentlemen with uncanny conviction.) In adulthood he quickly established himself in the world of advertising copywriting (pleading guilty to a number of catchphrases and images of the seventies!) Confused with a multiplicity of talents he found himself involved in television voice-overs, poetry readings and as a writer/performer of radio comedy shows (an early member of the satirical Week Ending team, where his Neil Kinnock remains unsurprassed!) In addition to all this he found time to mount his own London art exhibitions. Few people who saw an early incarnation of Bob Kingdom's Dylan Thomas at the Chelsea Arts Club would have realised the international critical acclaim which would follow, to demand that the show should run seemingly for ever and everywhere. It has been seen in Britain, the United States, Australia and the Republic of Ireland. Indeed it has gone beyond the English speaking world to France, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. On Christmas Day 1990 the Sky satellite network brought Kingdom's Dylan into numerous parlours.