David Greenspan Peers Beyond the Veil in Joey Merlo’s Eerie One-Person Show

The situation was bound to combust, and it did: in 1975, nearly a decade late in delivering his manuscript, Capote published a chapter from his upcoming book in Esquire, and all hell broke loose. His swans felt betrayed—he changed their names, but laid out all their secrets—and vowed to destroy his social life. Between the brutal snubbing from his former friends and his excessive drinking habits, Capote began to spiral out of control, and he died, in 1984, without ever completing his book. This saga, with all its delicious twists and turns, forms the basis of the new FX/Hulu series “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” which premièred on Jan. 31. Tom Hollander is brilliant as Capote, and a bank of formidable actresses (Naomi Watts as Paley, Diane Lane as Keith, Chloë Sevigny as Guest, Calista Flockhart as Radziwill, Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson, Demi Moore as Ann Woodward) play the women he both adored and exposed.