Jesse Tyler Ferguson Elevates a Museum Piece in Tru at Menier

Jesse Tyler Ferguson delivers an 85-minute monologue at the Menier Chocolate Factory that earns five stars for a script that, on its own merits, merits three. That is the verdict of the Guardian's review of Tru, now playing at the London venue until 14 November.

The production centres on Truman Capote at the point where his career had already collapsed into legend. Capote's core creative life, the review notes, was brief. It peaked between two books: the jolly novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, published in 1958, and In Cold Blood in 1965, the work the review credits as genre-influential — the book that established the "nonfiction-novel" as a form.

What followed that peak was silence. Blocked by drugs and drink, Capote spent two decades not writing his soi-disant masterpiece, Answered Prayers. When early chapters appeared in magazine publication, the consequences were social rather than literary: the socialites he moved among ostracised him, having found the novel not nonfiction enough. The scandal of Answered Prayers — intimate portrait disguised as fiction — destroyed the world Capote had mined for material.

The review's central judgement rests on a discrepancy between performance and text. Ferguson, the actor best known to wide audiences for television comedy, sustains an 85-minute monologue — a format that strips away every supporting apparatus and leaves one performer alone with the audience. That achievement, the review's five-star rating implies, sits at the highest level.

Paul Farnsworth's set receives equal praise. The review calls it immersive, and pairs it with Ferguson's performance as the elements of the production that "deserve better than a Broadway museum piece text." The criticism lands on the script itself, which the review characterises as a museum piece — a preserved artefact of an earlier Broadway era rather than a living confrontation with its subject.

The framing is pointed. A play about a writer whose late career consisted of not writing invites questions about blockage, betrayal and self-destruction. The review's assessment suggests the text approaches that material as retrospective exhibit rather than dramatic inquiry, leaving Ferguson and Farnsworth's design work to supply the immediacy the script withholds.

For audiences weighing a visit before the 14 November closing date, the recommendation embedded in the review is clear: go for the performance. Ferguson's monologue and Farnsworth's immersive set are the production's living elements; the script supplies the frame. The engagement at the Menier Chocolate Factory offers London audiences a rare chance to see Ferguson sustain a solo stage role — and, on this evidence, he is the reason to book.