Dalton Trumbo’s letters on stage at Waterbury’s Grange Hall Cultural Center

Feb. 2, 2023  |  By Waterbury Roundabout

Donny Osman, front, is Oscar-winning writer Dalton Trumbo in 'Trumbo: Red White and Blacklisted,' and Nick Charyk, right, plays son Christopher Trumbo. On stage in Waterbury, Plainfield and White River Junction. Photo by Monica Callan

Play poster image courtesy Pushcart Productions

Pushcart Productions, Plainfield Arts, and the Grange Hall Cultural Center present the play, “Trumbo: Red White and Blacklisted,” featuring the razor-sharp letters of Oscar-winning writer Dalton Trumbo in Plainfield Feb. 10-12, in Waterbury Feb. 17-19, and in White River Junction March 4-5. 

The two-person play written by Trumbo’s son Christopher features a series of Trumbo’s letters and speeches. The letters — to former friends, to fellow blacklistees, to his daughter’s teacher, and even to the telephone company— are as well-crafted as any of the scripts that made him the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood until his fall from grace in 1947.

Bruce Weber writing in the New York Times called the letters “thrilling, uneconomical torrents of words, alternately grandiloquent, ferocious, withering, sentimental, thunderously overwrought and always tailored, often hilariously, to their intended readership of one.”

The play was created in 1997 when Christopher Trumbo organized an event honoring his late father in which Steve Martin, an old friend of the Trumbo family, read from Dalton Trumbo’s letters. The reception was so enthusiastic that Christopher reshaped the evening into the play that opened as an Off-Broadway production in 2003, starring Nathan Lane as Trumbo. Successive Trumbo actors have included Alec Baldwin, Brian Dennehy, Ed Harris, Richard Dreyfuss and Tim Robbins.

Nick Charyk, left, is Christopher Trumbo, and Vermont theater veteran Donny Osman, right, brings to life the Oscar-winning writer Dalton Trumbo in 'Trumbo: Red White and Blacklisted,' on stage in Waterbury Feb. 17-19. Photo by Monica Callan

In Vermont, a team of artists and a scholar/artist have teamed up to bring the Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo’s words to life. Vermont theater veteran Donny Osman plays Trumbo. History and context for the letters and speeches are provided through the narration of Trumbo’s son, played by Nick Charyk, frontman for the Vermont band The Western Terrestrials. 

Monica Callan, Waterbury theater maker and co-founder of MOXIE Productions and the Grange Hall Cultural Center, directs. Rick Winston, founder of Montpelier’s Savoy Theater and author of “Red Scare in the Green Mountains: The McCarthy Era in Vermont 1946-1960,” serves as the show's dramaturg.  

The WDEV/VTDigger radio show “The Vermont Conversation with David Goodman” aired an episode recently discussing the play.

Performances

• Plainfield Opera House, High Street, Plainfield, on Feb. 10-11 at 7 p.m. and Feb. 12 at 4 p.m. Tickets at the door or online at plainfieldoperahousevt.com.

• Grange Hall Cultural Center, 317 Howard Ave., Waterbury Center, on Feb. 17-18 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 19 at 3 p.m. Tickets cash/check at the door or online at SevenDaystickets.com.

• The Main Street Museum, 58 Bridge St., White River Junction, on March 4 at 7:30 p.m. and March 5 at 3 p.m. Tickets cash/check at the door or online at SevenDaystickets.com.