To Whom It May Concern
By Terry Stoller
Trumbo
By Christopher Trumbo
Westside Theatre (Downstairs)
407 W. 43rd St.
Box office: (212) 315-2244
While scholars and critics debate the borders
of the real and representation, contemporary audiences are filling theatres
to hear the stories and words of actual people in plays like The
Vagina Monologues and The Exonerated. One reason may be
the draw of star performers, cast by wily producers; another reason
may be that people are eager to learn about personal and public history
as a way to find meaning in their own lives. Trumbo offers
both a starry experience and a window into the life of a fascinating
and talented writer. The play, performed as a staged reading at the
Westside Theatre/Downstairs, is a presentation of the letters and speeches
of Dalton Trumbo. He was one of the "Hollywood Ten," who in
the late forties were blacklisted by the movie industry and served prison
terms for contempt of Congress. The production opened with Nathan Lane
starring as Dalton Trumbo and Gordon MacDonald as his son Christopher.
It is currently advertising a rotating celebrity cast in the weeks to
come, including F. Murray Abraham and Brian Dennehy.
Christopher Trumbo put together the piece, which
narrates his father’s journey from his appearance as an unfriendly witness
before the House Committee on Un-American Activities to his time in
prison to his self-imposed exile in Mexico and his eventual return to
California. Throughout these troubled times, Trumbo circumvented the
blacklist by submitting film scripts under a pseudonym or using the
services of a “front.” Not until 1960—thanks to Kirk Douglas as a producer
of the film Spartacus and Otto Preminger as producer/director
of Exodus—did Trumbo’s name appear again in film credits.
The play opens with a eulogy by Trumbo’s friend,
writer Ring Lardner Jr., who makes it clear that Trumbo was neither
virtuous nor universally revered. The Trumbo who emerges from his writings
is by turns acerbic, angry, righteous, loving, and funny. That he was
angry as he experienced the seismic shocks in his world is understandable.
But he was not above targeting his acid words and sharp wit at a local
telephone signal company that installed an intercom system for him.
He advised the head of the company to send the bill to Trumbo's business
manager, who “hates creditors and does not pay them too promptly.”
Having addressed an earlier correspondence to the company to “Dear
burglars,” Trumbo also extended his "good wishes for the
holiday season to everyone in the thuggery." Incarceration did
not diminish his humor. A poem he composed for Christopher’s tenth birthday
was (like all his other correspondence from prison) capped off with
the words Prisoner Number 7551. A devoted father, Trumbo fired off a
passionate protest to the principal of his daughter’s elementary school,
where she was experiencing negative fallout from her father’s reputation.
Trumbo wrote letters as copiously as he did screenplays, and one historian
says he was able to turn out forty script pages a day. (Letters dating
from 1942 to 1962 have been collected in a volume titled Additional
Dialogue.)
The play doesn’t delve into Trumbo’s political
affiliations or explain why he and his friends joined the Communist
Party. In an aside, however, the son shares his father’s explanation
of the difference between communism and capitalism. For communism, the
father gives the classic definition: from each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs. But capitalism, explains the parent,
is a “system where one person hires a second person to perform some
task, and then sells the product to a third person for a profit.” Weighing
the two systems, the son resolves to become a capitalist. Christopher
also relates a moment of personal political consciousness-raising when
he visited his father at the Federal Correctional Institute in Ashland,
Kentucky. The son's introduction to segregation rules came when he stumbled
into the blacks-only balcony of Ashland’s movie theatre. How ironic,
he thought, that his father was accused of un-American activities in
a country in which discrimination was tolerated as an American activity.
Director Peter Askin’s staging employs clever
lighting and projections to suggest the change of place, from Trumbo’s
study to his prison cell to his Mexican retreat. Historical footage
provides context, with scenes from the House committee’s proceedings,
including testimony by such “friendly” witnesses as Ronald Reagan and
Gary Cooper. The two actors remain aware of each other as they read
the material, with Lane addressing sections of the “Christopher” letters
to MacDonald and MacDonald showing his enjoyment of both Trumbo’s writing
and Lane’s performance. Their rapport enlivens the recitations and underlines
the son’s affection for his father.
The eloquence of the letters is well matched
by Lane’s expressiveness. In the hands of the musical-comedy star, the
piece has the feel of a concert. There is a beautiful ballad, a long,
moving letter Trumbo wrote to the mother of a recently deceased friend
whom he had met as a war correspondent and who had agreed to act as
his front. The letter vividly describes the experiences of two men far
from home, facing the dangers of war. The show-stopper is a letter that
Trumbo wrote to his son about the benefits of masturbation, detailing
his own experiences and practices. The delivery veers into a Nathan
Lane extravaganza with vocal mannerisms and gestures, but the writing
is equally extravagant, even masturbatory. Yet Christopher includes
this letter as a representation of his father; he says he shared it
with many friends, and it came to be known as “the letter.”
Though the blacklist era feels like an episode
of the past, curtailing people’s rights is very much a concern of the
present. As I left the theatre, I heard people making connections between
the play and the Bush Administration’s campaign for the Patriot Act.
Indeed Trumbo’s producers are dedicating a portion of the proceeds
to People for the American Way, an organization, the program reads,
that is “active wherever the First Amendment, other constitutional rights
and core democratic values are at risk.”
Trumbo is a compelling firsthand account
of a man who lived through a dark period in American life. It’s also
a reminder of the riches to be found in correspondence—a tribute to
the art of letter writing, an art that may be vanishing in an era of
erasable e-mails.