“What is called for in the play is not to impersonate Truman Capote,” said Terence Artz, who’s playing the role of the adult Capote in “Holiday Memories,” a play focused on young Capote’s relationship with his beloved and eccentric Aunt Sook.
“That would be a distraction from the story. I want the character to be understated and to help the audience really see and understand what is going on with the other characters.”
Russell Vandenbroucke’s 1991 play adapts two of Capote’s stories into a tale about young “Buddy,” as the young Capote is called in the play. The two deal with a bully, bake fruitcake and find the perfect Christmas tree.
“We wanted to do something that is sentimental and nice and not ‘A Christmas Carol,’ ” said Kathryn Beall, the company’s artistic manager, who is directing the production. “Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘A Christmas Carol,’ but it does get done to death.” In fact, OLT staged “Jacob Marley,” a retelling of that story, last year at this time.
“This is a different kind of play,” she said. “It’s sweet. It’s a little sad. It has heartwarming moments.”
She was familiar with the stories, she said. “When I first suggested this play to people who only knew Truman Capote from ‘In Cold Blood,’ they were like, ‘Truman Capote wrote a Christmas story?!’ ”
“I was unfamiliar with the short stories until I read the script,” Artz said, “and as I read the script, I just fell in love with it. They really are beautiful stories.
“This is probably one of my favorite characters that I’ve had the opportunity to take on, and I’ve been working in theater for 25-plus years.”
He particularly appreciated the rich language of the play. “The prose is lush,” he said. “It has that Southern cadence to it.”
The way Artz will deliver that language was inspired by another late Southern author, the historian and novelist Shelby Foote, whose voice became familiar to many when he was featured in Ken Burns’s 1990 PBS documentary series “The Civil War.” One critic described Foote’s voice as “molasses over hominy.”
It’s a fitting inspiration considering that the older Capote functions primarily as a narrator.
“I wanted a good narrative style that is not distracting to the audience,” he said. “They’re not listening to a bad impersonation of Truman Capote. They are listening to a rich and warm background narrative that helps them paint a picture.”
