Tru
Thurs.-Sat., July 14-16, 7 p.m., and Wed.-Sat., July 20-23, 7 p.m.; Sun. July 17 and 24, 2 p.m. Studio@620, 620 First Ave. S., St. Petersburg. $25/ $20. 727-895-6620. thestudioat620.org.
Even if you didn’t buy the set-up of A Tale of Two Cities at American Stage — drag queen re-enacts Dickens novel to calm a baby — you couldn’t help but admire the versatility of Mark Chambers as that drag queen and umpteen other characters, from the noble Sydney Carton to the conniving Mme. Defarge. Now we get to see Chambers as a real-life character — the flamboyant Truman Capote in Jay Presson Allen’s 1989 play Tru. In a performance acclaimed as “full of wit and verve,” Chambers plays the author at a crucial moment, hunkered down in his NYC apartment in 1975 after the publication in Esquire of an excerpt from his book Answered Prayers, which famously bit the high-society hands that fed him. Lisa Powers Tricomis directs.
This article appears in Jul 7-14, 2016.