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PETER ASKIN ?(Director) recently directed Mike O'Malley's Searching for Certainty in LA and John Leguizamo's Sexaholix on Broadway and in Los Angeles. ?He also directed Mambo Mouth (Obie, Outer Critics Circle), Spic-O-Rama (Drama Desk), the New York, London and Los Angeles productions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch(Obie, Outer Critics Circle Awards). Other New York credits include: Dael Orlandersmith's Monster and Beauty's Daughter (Obie). ?He also conceived and directed Ms. Orlandersmith's The Gimmick for the McCarter Theatre and Sundance. ?Additional stage credits include: ?Linda Herr, How It Hangs, Beauty Marks, Ourselves Alone, Reno, Reality Ranch and Down an Alley Filled with Cats. ?Film credits: Company Man, Smithereens. Television: "Spic-O-Rama" (HBO, Cable Ace Award), "House of Buggin" (Fox), "Bet One I Make It" (WNET). Peter is the Director of New York's Westside and Jane Street Theatres. ? CHRISTOPHER TRUMBO was born in Los Angeles in 1940. ?His family spent two-and-a-half years in Mexico after his father was released from prison in 1951. ?A graduate of Columbia College in New York City, he began working in motion pictures in 1960 as an assistant director on Otto Preminger's production of Exodus. ?For the last thirty-five years he has worked as a writer, primarily in the motion picture and television industries. ?He shared a writing credit with his father on the television film, Ishi: The Last of his Tribe, completing the project after his father died. ?His most recent project is the motion picture script for Sinatraland to be directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Additional bios to come Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter (The Brave One, Exodus, Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Lonely Are the Brave, Spartacus, Roman Holiday, Papillon) and novelist (Johnny Got His Gun), refused, along with the rest of the "Hollywood Ten", to answer Congress' questions regarding his political affiliations during his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee. ?For this,Trumbo was fired from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and imprisoned for a year in 1950. After his release, Trumbo, blacklisted and "broke as a bankrupt's bastard," was unable to find work in the United States. His letters, brilliant, biting, and hilarious, tell the story of a family's survival and one stubborn artist's crusade to break the blacklist. ?TRUMBO is a story of an American who took on Congress, Hollywood and a fearful nation...and won. Filmography: Always (1989) (screenplay A Guy Named Joe) Roman Holiday (1987) (story) (front Ian McLellan Hunter) Ishi: The Last of His Tribe (1978) (TV) Papillon (1973) Executive Action (1973) (screenplay) F.T.A. (1972) (book Johnny Got His Gun) Johnny Got His Gun (1971) (also novel) Horsemen, The (1971) Fixer, The (1968) Hawaii (1966) Sandpiper, The (1965) Lonely Are the Brave (1962) Last Sunset, The (1961) Spartacus (1960) Exodus (1960) Career (1959) Terror in a Texas Town (1958)(written by) (front Ben Perry) Cowboy (1958) (screenplay) (originally uncredited) Green-Eyed Blonde, The (1957) (written by) (front Sally Stubblefield) Deerslayer, The (1957) (uncredited) Brothers Rico, The (1957) (uncredited) Brave One, The (1956) (screenplay) (originallyuncredited)(story) (originally as Robert Rich) Boss, The (1956) (written by) (front Ben Perry) Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, The (1955) (uncredited) ... aka One Man Mutiny (1955) (UK) Mannequins fur Rio (1954) (uncredited) ... aka Party Girls for Sale (1954) ... aka They Were So Young (1955) (USA) ... aka Violated (1954) Carnival Story (1954)(uncredited) Roman Holiday (1953) (story)(front Ian McLellan Hunter) He Ran All the Way (1951) (screenplay) (front Guy Endore) Prowler, The (1951) (screenplay) (originally uncredited) Emergency Wedding (1950) ... aka Jealousy (1950) (UK) Rocketship X-M (1950) (uncredited) ... aka Expedition Moon (1950) Deadly Is the Female (1949) (screenplay) (front Millard Kaufman) ... aka Gun Crazy (1950) (USA: reissue title) Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) Jealousy (1945) (story) Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) Tender Comrade (1943) (also story) Guy Named Joe, A (1943) I Married a Witch (1942) (uncredited) Remarkable Andrew, The (1942) (also novel) You Belong to Me (1941) (story) ... aka Good Morning, Doctor (1941) (UK) Accent on Love (1941) (story) Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940) (screenplay) ... aka Kitty Foyle (1940) (USA: short title) We Who Are Young (1940) (screenplay) Bill of Divorcement, A (1940) ... aka Never to Love (1940) (USA: reissue title) Curtain Call (1940) (screenplay) Half a Sinner (1940) (story Lady Takes a Chance) Lone Wolf Strikes, The (1940) (story) Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939) Career (1939) Five Came Back (1939) Kid From Kokomo, The (1939)(story Broadway Cavalier) ... aka Orphan of the Ring (1939) (UK) Sorority House (1939) ... aka That Girl from College (1939) (UK) Flying Irishman, The (1939) (screenplay) Man to Remember, A (1938) Fugitives for a Night (1938) (screenplay) Paradise for Three (1938)(screenplay construction contributor) (uncredited) ... aka Romance for Three (1938) (UK) Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937) (script polisher) (uncredited) That Man's Here Again (1937) (contributor to treatment) (uncredited) Devil's Playground, The (1937) Tugboat Princess (1936) (story) Love Begins at Twenty (1936) (screenplay) ... aka All One Night (1936) Road Gang (1936) ... aka Injustice (1936) (UK) Dalton Trumbo - Nathan Lane Christopher Trumbo - Gordon MacDonald By CHARLES ISHERWOOD The speedy advance of telecommunications technology has hastened the death of the literary letter. The work begun by the telephone has been more or less finished off by email, a seductively convenient but anti-literate form of communication. All the more reason, then, to cherish the epistolary legacies of the past. This new play based on the letters of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo provides a brief refresher course on the perversion of American ideals that held sway in Washington at the height of the Cold War. It's also a moving testament to the severe personal and professional cost of the red scare in Hollywood. But above all it's a wonderful showcase for beautifully crafted, often uproariously funny writing that otherwise might have been lost to history. Stifled by the studios, Trumbo seems to have kept his literary gifts in sharp shape by composing letters that positively sizzle with wit, intelligence and a bracing moral rectitude that tempers an abiding -- and entirely understandable -- tone of bitterness. The show was conceived and written by Trumbo's son Christopher, and the two Trumbos are the two "characters" onstage. But Christopher, played with understated ease by Gordon MacDonald, is as much narrator as character (MacDonald plays a couple of other small roles, too). And Nathan Lane, as the senior Trumbo, isn't really attempting to impersonate the man. He is essentially called upon to give a theatrical presentation of Trumbo's letters, and he delivers each like an impeccably trained tenor digging into a showpiece aria. (Lane performs only through Sept. 21; the role subsequently will be taken by a series of actors.) The play begins with excerpts from Trumbo's testimony before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. He alternates blunt rebuffs -- "Very many questions can be answered 'yes' or 'no' only by a moron or a slave" -- with hilarious evasions that clearly evince his contempt for the proceedings. When the gavel comes down for the last time -- "This is typical Communist tactics!" the interrogator intones -- unemployment and a life of scraping by begins. As one of the Hollywood 10 and officially disgraced, Trumbo moved with his family to a ranch in Northern California, where his excess energy was devoted to needless and expensive renovations. He begins one deliciously sarcastic letter to a contractor, "Dear Burglars," and concludes another, in which he admits payment will be a good 60 days late, with this thought: "Considering what you've done to me, I ought to make you wait the full nine months." More serious, if no less amusing, missives are sent to a fair-weather friend who had denounced him and then sent a charity check and a letter professing "affection" ("Give me no more affection; I stagger beneath that already conferred"); and to the treasurer of the Screenwriters Guild, who had notified him his dues were in arrears ("I thought (your letter) rather loud and more than ordinarily witless, but to deny you those qualities would be to silence you altogether; and that, for constitutional reasons alone, I should not like to see happen"). The lucidity and eloquence of Trumbo's writing are pleasurable in themselves, and Lane gives these qualities their full due, proving himself a natural communicator of some impeccable but dauntingly rich syntax. But it's Lane's natural ability to orchestrate the humor in the letters for maximum effect that gives the show its theatrical energy. A screenwriter little known for comedy -- "Roman Holiday" was an exception in a career highlighted by "Spartacus," "Lonely Are the Brave," "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and "Papillon" -- Trumbo was spectacularly funny in prose. One long letter to a college-age Christopher, devoted to celebrating the work of Albert Ellis, Ph.D. -- author of "Sex Without Guilt" and valiant defender of onanism -- is a masterpiece of 20th-century humor. This priceless sequence, delivered with particular relish by Lane, is alone worth the price of admission (a not-too-cheap $65, by the way). But Trumbo was scarcely less eloquent when more serious matters were at hand. A note to his wife, sent from the prison where Trumbo served time for contempt of Congress, is poignant in its simple expression of profound feeling and its humble practicality. A condolence letter sent to the mother of a writer who acted as a "front" for Trumbo's screenplays during the blacklist years is a beautifully articulate expression of love and respect from a man more comfortable being misanthropic. Maybe finest of all is a letter in which Trumbo, with cool logic underscored by a simmering, passionate righteousness, dissects the hypocrisy and cant of Hollywood producers, laying the blame for the blacklist itself squarely on their shoulders.
The production is simple but classy. Loy Arcenas provides a mostly blank set with a book-lined backdrop. Lighting by Jeff Croiter switches from stark to soothing as Trumbo's fortunes rise and fall. Peter Askin directs with a light touch, keeping the pacing smooth and even. As fine as Lane is, he is not the real draw here: The star of this show is the writing itself, which gives an inspiring new perspective on a dark period in U.S. history, reminding us that not all Americans -- in Hollywood or elsewhere -- succumbed to the prevailing hysteria and cowardice; some fought lonely battles against them, refusing to abandon their principles for the sake of expediency. The power of Trumbo's writing can't really be separated from the vitality of his moral intelligence, and in Trumbo's case, such clarity of thought was not just the source of fine writing, but also of right action. |