Both these issues in the Philadelphia Theatre Company production are ingeniously solved by Christopher Trumbo, Dalton Trumbo's son and the author of this affectionate, affecting and often uproariously funny work, and Bill Irwin, who fashions a portrait of a complex and fascinating personality from Trumbo's words.
Anyone who knows Dalton Trumbo only from such high-minded screenplays as Spartacus and Exodus (the 1960 movies that gave Trumbo screen credit and broke the blacklist) will be surprised and delighted by the merciless wit of his letters. They are masterly exercises in a genre whose skills have long since disappeared under an avalanche of e-mail and text messages.
Trumbo, which is being presented at Plays & Players Theatre, is arranged in a loose and effective chronology that spans the years from 1947, when he was hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee, to 1970, when the Screenwriters Guild tried to atone for the wrongs he had suffered with a lifetime achievement award.
In the life and letters of this cantankerous, stubborn and yet loving man, we can follow one of the most unsavory chapters in Hollywood's - and our country's - history. Faced with a choice between naming names and professional ruin, Trumbo stood his ground. He eventually served a year in prison and many more in Tinseltown's wilderness.
Trumbo opens with his committee appearance, and it could profitably have found a way to expand on the excruciating dilemma that confronted Trumbo and many others.
William Zielinski is unobtrusive but telling as Christopher Trumbo, who serves as the narrator and, of course, was a very young witness to the disaster that befell his family. This inspired device allows the exploration of the bonds between a long- dead father and a son that heightens the emotions of the play.
Dalton Trumbo didn't write simple prose. His letters are terraced paragraphs of Dickensian proportions, and Irwin reads them with consummate skill and timing.
