Chicago with Molly Woulfe

Arts chief John Cain stars as rascally writer in one-man Capote show

By Molly Woulfe

He was a tiny terror, giant talent and jet-set pet in the ’60s and ’70s.

But Truman Capote, one of post-war America’s leading writers, bit the bejeweled hand that fed him. Slapped away, he never recovered. The short, high-pitched charmer and talk-show darling died in 1984. He was 59.

John Cain, portraying the mercurial scribe in the one-man play “Tru” at the Towle Theater, regards his pill-popping, alter ego as a flawed genius.

“It’s a very great tragedy he didn’t get to finish his last work,” the actor and executive director of South Shore Arts said.

A ringer for Capote, Cain, 54, has appeared as Capote at several functions. But the 90-minute play — tonight’s opening gala is a fund-raiser for the SSA and the Towle — marks the ex-drama student’s return to the stage. He and director Jeff Casey agreed he should “reference” Capote’s signature lisp rather than mimic it. “You don’t want it to be monotonous or irritating. You need to be a whole person,” Cain said.

Written by Jay Presson Allen and based on Capote’s words, the play chronicles Tru’s flamboyant life and times, from his mother’s desertion to his meteoric rise to fame. Robert Morse created the title role in his Tony-winning performance in 1989.

A high school dropout, the Southern-bred Capote began working at The New Yorker at 17 and published his first book in his 20s. His crisp, sensitive prose resulted in masterpieces. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958) was made into a hit movie starring Audrey Hepburn. “In Cold Blood” (1966) — a chilling account of the 1959 murder of a Kansas family — invented a new literary genre, the nonfiction novel. Capote personally adapted his story “A Christmas Memory” for TV.

But Capote became famous for partying as much as his books.

As the play opens, though, the 51-year-old writer is miserable. It’s two days before Christmas 1975 and the “wrong” people are phoning his Manhattan apartment.

Capote tries to be saucy, dubbing poinsettias “the Robert Goulet of Botany.” But he is bewildered by the reaction to a published excerpt of his book, “Answered Prayers.”

It seems close friend Babe Paley and the Beautiful People are incensed at his thinly veiled accounts of their trysts and boozing. “My God, you’d think I killed the Lindbergh baby! What’s the big deal,” he spits. “… I am not one of them. I am an artist.”

In Act II, Capote, suffering from a next-day hangover, broods over his past and tries to make peace with his present. He name-drops, eats penny candy, and reads from “A Christmas Memory.” Though lonely, he is unrepentant about dishing the dirt on his friends. When one writes a truthful book, “there’s always a touch of murder,” he insists.

Longtime Capote fan Cain identifies with his alter ego. For starters, their physical resemblance is startling, as borne out by the blown-up 1975 Esquire magazine cover featuring Capote (testing a knife blade) in Cain’s office.

Both men also grew up gay in small towns where they wrestled with the same issues and experiences, the “little milestones” en route to self-acceptance and adulthood, the arts chief said. Like Capote, Cain also has a longtime, long-distance partner.

But Capote was an artist — one who pursued celebrity and rich and famous friends — while the droll Cain works a room of well-heeled executives on behalf of region arts programs.

“I’m in the business and profession to make friends and keep them,” he joked. “If I betrayed people like he did, I would lose my job.”

Cain made his stage debut at 5 as an angel in a Christmas Eve pageant. He graduated to musicals and comedies in high school, starring as the title character in “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown” and as Jesus in “Godspell” in college. He also appeared opposite future “Tru” star Morse in a college production of “Three Men on a Horse.”

WHAT: John Cain in “Tru” April 24-26 and May 1-3 (8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays)
WHERE: Towle Theater, 5205 Hohman Ave., Hammond.
COST: $100 opening night gala; other performances, $20
FYI: (219) 937-8780 or towletheater.org; tonight’s gala includes a cocktail reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. with chocolate martinis at intermission. Show time is 8 p.m.

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