In the late 1970s, Pop Art icon Andy Warhol taped hundreds of hours of conversations between himself and his close friend, the novelist Truman Capote (In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany’s). Mr. Warhol had been obsessed with recording ordinary events in his life from dinner parties to phone conversations and even cab fares. The tapes between these two celebrities were never released. After Warhol’s death in 1987, it was determined that the tapes would not become public until 2037, likely due to salacious comments made about other celebrities and fear of lawsuits. Humphrey Bogart would likely be very unhappy with the Capote story told here.
With persistency, Rob Roth got access to and has adapted these talks into a play. The nominal plotline here is that these two unique and significant artists from the 1950s to the late 1970s wanted to do a Broadway play together. Very little of WARHOLCAPOTE is about that or, frankly, anything else. What we get here is snippets of conversations between two very famous oddities, both notable for their one-of-a kind verbal inflections. Capote is intelligent and somewhat bitchy. Warhol is introverted and wide-eyed. They remain fascinating.
Both Stephen Spinella (Warhol) and Dan Butler (Capote) nicely perform their roles. One can appreciate that all of the dialogue has been extracted from those tapes. The Scenic Design by Stanley A. Mayer (Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast) really whets the appetite when you walk into the theater. The problem for me was that there was no focal point to hold this all together. Avid aficionados may relish the time to relive these men and their quirky charms. Most others will be politely bored which may be the most shocking thing about WARHOLCAPOTE.