When the relationship between wealth and art goes sour, it tends to go wrong in one of two ways: Either the rich benefactor ditches the artist because the golden leash wasn’t tight enough, or the artist, fed up, bites the perfumed hand. Sometimes, though, there’s a horrible third option. They stay entangled, bound together in need and hunger, snapping at each other as the rest of us watch.
Enter Truman Capote, or, really “Tru,” the posthumous portrait of Capote written by Jay Presson Allan in 1989, originally played on Broadway by the vulnerable and endearing Robert Morse. (You can watch that version on YouTube.) Now, the tenser, more self-sufficient Jesse Tyler Ferguson — the sly comic core of the TV series “Modern Family” — revives the monologue, tucking it into a super-intimate venue, a luxuriously paneled library at the House of the Redeemer on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The place is a faux-baronial slice of old-world splendor, with double-decker bookcases and blank-eyed caryatids leaning on the fireplace. Around 99 of us fill the room, sitting, variously, on chairs, at tables or on a richly draped couch where Capote himself might flop down as he bustles around his “home.” The point of this baffling show is to rub elbows, not only with the spirit of Capote but also the more corporeal presence of Ferguson-the-star.
“Tru” takes place during Capote’s long disgrace after he published “La Côte Basque, 1965” — a cruelly indiscreet chapter from an unfinished roman-à-clef about his relationship with a network of socialite glamour-queens — in Esquire magazine. As he speaks, he seems to think we are his recording angels: Tru touches lightly on his writing life, but he then goes heavy on his complaints.
His tragedy is that his wealthy one-time friends, the women he called his “swans,” spat him out like a bad nut after the Esquire incident. At one point, Tru dictates a pained telegram to Babe Paley, the swan he most regrets alienating. In the director Rob Ashford’s staging, Paley’s avatar drifts around the room in the silent person of the dancer Charlotte d’Amboise, her black, backless evening gown revealing perfect, ruthless shoulder blades.
Unfortunately, names don’t drop like they used to. Perhaps in 1989, when Capote had died within the decade, rumors about Carol Matthau might yet have titillated an audience. I did hear a snuffle of laughter over a mention of Swifty Lazar, but even with the preparation of a Ryan Murphy series (“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”), the travails of ’60s New York glitterati seem to have moved into obscurity. Ferguson tries to keep up the intensity by making frequent eye contact with his guests. But gossip stales fast — another snuffle sounded distinctly like a snore.
Tru tells us that the rich bore one another, which is why they “try to take in amusing artists.” Ferguson’s drawl drips contempt at the thought. But this revival of Allan’s rather wistful show is confusing on this front. The production treats d’Amboise as set dressing, invites us into a near-private experience in an Italianate library and charges up to $349 a seat. Is it possible that we have become the boring rich?
The, uh, good news is that you can feel similarly terrible about yourself at a far better monologue: “The Fever,” a revival of Wallace Shawn’s deliberately punishing, two-hour, no-breaks 1990 solo show about an aesthete vomiting his guts out in a hotel bathroom in a “poor country.” Shawn’s immense, puckish charm — he preens a little over having a Thermos, while we do not — sugars the pill, but the question that animates his looping, never-ending monologue is still a pill: Why should he have money when the chambermaid who cleans his room does not?
To answer, the speaker tells us about his own good fortune, marveling woozily at how little he examines the “external” factors of his life. In the monologue’s slyest joke, someone leaves “Das Kapital” on the guy’s doorstep. Don’t worry, if you forgot to read it, he’ll feed it to you.
Shawn performs “The Fever” on the nights his “What We Did Before Our Moth Days” isn’t using the Greenwich House Theater. All he requires is a chair and a seemingly endless set of clothing layers (“I like to be warm but not too warm”) to perform. The Shawn intonation — bewitching, a little surprised, sliding like the colors on a barber pole up and up and up — ensures that you are lulled into a state of acceptance. Marx should have tried this: hypnosis as praxis.
It’s hard for me to say that “The Fever” is a jolly time in the theater, but it is darned effective. For those watching it (top ticket price $229), it feels like that Capote chapter in Esquire — a cruel revelation of our class’s open secrets. I saw “The Fever” on Monday, and I’m still in a state of shock. I’ve seen myself in its mirror! What a ghoul I am.
Tru Through May 3 at the House of the Redeemer, Manhattan; truplaynyc.com.
The Fever Through May 24 at the Greenwich House Theater, Manhattan; mothdays.com.
Helen Shaw is the chief theater critic for The Times.
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