Stage play adapted from the novella by Truman Capote. New York City, 1943. William 'Fred' Parsons, a young writer from Louisiana, meets Miss Holly Golightly, a charming, vivacious and utterly elusive good-time girl. Everyone falls in love with Holly, including William - but he is poor, and Holly needs rich. Will she marry Rusty, playboy millionaire? Or Jose, the future president of Brazil? As war rages in Europe, Holly begins to fall in love with William - and then her past catches up with her...
Original Production with Anna Friel (adapted by Samuel Adamson) 2009
1st West End Revival with Pixie Lott (adapted by Richard Greenberg) 2016
Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Anna Friel 2009
Previewed 9 September 2009, Opened 29 September 2009, Closed 9 January 2010 at the Haymarket Theatre in London.
A major stage production of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's in London, in a new adaptation by Samuel Adamson, starring Anna Friel
The cast featured Anna Friel as 'Holly Golightly', Joseph Cross as 'William 'Fred' Parsons', James Dreyfus as 'O J Berman', John Ramm as 'Doc Golightly', and Suzanne Bertish as 'Madame Spanella', with Annie Hemingway, Gwendoline Christie, James Bradshaw, Sam Hoare, Paul Courtenay Hyu, Dermot Crowley, Felix D'Alviella, Nicholas Goh, Elizabeth Crarer and David Phelan.
Directed by Sean Mathias, with design by Anthony Ward, lighting by Bruno Poet, and sound by Paul Groothuis.
Please note that this production contains some strong language and scenes of nudity.
Sean Mathias' credits include the play Cowardice.
"Imagine if Michelangelo had employed not a chisel to construct David but a Black & Decker chainsaw, and you get an idea of what a Horlicks the director Sean Mathias has made of Breakfast at Tiffany's... Mathias and Samuel Adamson, who has adapted Capote's work, have turned the anonymous narrator into an additional character: a dull, insipid fellow by the name of William, played by Joseph Cross. This is modish, concept theatre: a New York skyline against a Tiffany-turquoise backdrop is deemed enough to suggest New York in the 1940s, and a couple of flimsy staircases suffice as Miss Golightly's brownstone apartment block. All of this does Miss Friel no favours at all, but she acquits herself with considerable grace under pressure." The Sunday Telegraph
"Anna Friel is pretty much the best thing in Sean Mathias's simultaneously lightweight and heavy-handed production. A tiny slip of a thing, she has the right gamine quality... She's a fabulous clothes horse and she's best when she goes to pieces, for a moment as fragile as she looks. But she has neither the charisma nor chutzpah to bewitch and beguile like Audrey Hepburn. The play's the clunker. Samuel Adamson has gone back to Truman Capote's sparkling, subtle novella from 1958 and fashioned a series of lacklustre, often leaden, scenes peopled for the most part by coarse and lumpy caricatures." The Mail on Sunday
Breakfast at Tiffany's in London at the Theatre Royal Haymarket Theatre previewed from 9 September 2009, opened on 29 September 2009 and closed on 9 January 2010.
Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Pixie Lott 2016
Previewed 30 June 2016, Opened 28 July 2016, Closed 17 September 2016 at the Haymarket Theatre Royal
A major new stage adaption by Richard Greenberg of the Truman Capote novel Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Pixie Lott.
Breakfast at Tiffany's, the classic tale of Holly Golightly so memorably portrayed by Audrey Hepburn in the iconic 1961 film, is given a new lease of life in this stylish production that features memorable songs from the era.
PLEASE NOTE: Recommended for ages 12 and above only.
The cast featured Pixie Lott as 'Holly Golightly', Matt Barber as 'William 'Fred' Parsons', Victor McGuire as 'Joe Bell', Robert Clavert as 'Doc Golightly', Naomi Cranston as 'Mag', Andrew Joshi as 'Yunioshi', Charlie De Melo as 'Jose', Melanie La Barrie as 'Madame Spanella'/'Stern Lady Boss', Sevan Stephan as 'O J Berman'/'Dr Goldman', Tim Frances as 'Editor'/'Rusty', Andy Watkins, and Katie Allen.
Directed by Nikolai Foster, with choreography by Melanie Knott, designs by Matthew Wright, lighting by Ben Cracknell, music by Grant Olding, and sound by Mic Pool.
This production originated at the Leicester Curve Theatre where it played from 3 to 12 March 2016 before embarking on a UK regional tour, including a 12-week run at London's Haymarket Theatre.
Pixie Lott is a chart topping pop singer and songwriter. Her acting credits include a guest role in the television series Inspector George Gently (BBC1 2014). She was also a contestant in the the TV series Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1 2014). Richard Greenberg's West End writing credits include the play Three Days of Rain starring James McAvoy and Nigel Harman at the Apollo Theatre in 2009. Nikolai Foster's London directing credits include Jonathan Harvey's play Beautiful Thing at the Arts Theatre in 2013, Flashdance the Musical at London's Shaftesbury Theatre in 2010 and the original pre-West End production of the David Essex musical All the Fun of the Fair.
When this production opened at the Haymarket Theatre in July 2016, Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph said that Pixie Lott "acquits herself commendably well in a part that requires her to carry a tune (tick), sustain an American accent (tick) and look rather fabulous (double-tick)." Ian Shuttleworth in the Financial Times thought that she "delivers every line in a vampish sing-song that reduces her character to the two dimensions of a 1960s American TV sitcom and makes her supposed universal attractiveness incomprehensible... Lott's performance may be more extreme than her fellows', but Foster's approach is consistent: everything here is a caricature. Alas, this is what neither Capote nor Greenberg wrote. Spectacle alone is not enough." Ann Treneman in the Times wrote that "the pop star Pixie Lott makes a great Holly. She is charismatic and stylish. She can act, though her interpretation is more Holly Go-Bubbly, as effervescent as champagne... It's a go-heavily evening. There are lots of other characters running around Matthew Wright's brilliant if sparse design which has key components of a Manhattan apartment block sliding on and off. We don't get to know most of them and we don't care either." Robert Gore-Langton in the Daily Mail commented that "the debutante Pixie Lott sashays, dips her sunglasses, says ‘Darlinck!’ in a Russian-French accent, and looks lovely in an extensive range of fetching outfits. But she's rather like a young, spirited gymkhana pony. At every little bar cleared you want to give her a pat and a carrot... American breakfasts are justly famous; but this leaves you craving a full English." Neil Norman in the Daily Express explained that "the producers have added a couple of extra songs to allow Ms Lott to exercise her pipes, which she does very well in a husky, emotive manner. Unfortunately these brief musical episodes are totally at odds with a performance that is adequate at best... The fact is that this is not a very good play and director Nikolai Foster can’t do much about it. Over-egged and undernourished, it also suffers from American accents that make Dick Van Dyke’s cockney sound like he was coached by Meryl Streep." Michael Billington in the Guardian highlighted that "Richard Greenberg faithfully reproduces Capote’s dialogue and retains his narrative voice. He can’t however, disguise the fact that Holly is essentially a literary creation who defies plausible embodiment... What we are left with on stage is a series of vignettes, a mechanically efficient production by Nikolai Foster and the presence of Pixie Lott. That may be enough for some. But I would rather see her in a role that gives full rein to her marvellous singing voice than as Capote’s mercurial gadfly." Fiona Mountford in the London Evening Standard described how "Richard Greenberg’s dreary adaptation goes back to the sterner-stuff source material of Truman Capote’s novella, meaning that there’s no will-they-won’t-they romance between flighty Holly and writer neighbour Fred... Pixie Lott is decent enough, if vocally underpowered at times, accompanying herself on the guitar as she sings Moon River passably. Yet nothing about her performance hints at the enduring appeal of Holly, who earns her living from a variety of rich men in ambiguous ways."
"This stylish, if sluggish, adaptation began at the Curve, in Leicester, and schlepped round the country before finding a swank West End address for the summer. On screen, Audrey Hepburn made Holly a radiant gamine; on stage, the popstrel Pixie Lott warms Truman Capote's heroine with scrunched-up smiles and sidelong glances. A self-invented, free-spirited party girl, she enthrals Fred, the young narrator, and, it seems, pretty much everyone else in wartime New York. Holly, supporting herself on cab fare and change for the powder room, lives her life in vivid colours. Fred craves that intensity; his illusions nestle around Holly's self-created legend. A slim book becomes a long evening: there are Wagner operas that move with more zip than Nikolai Foster's production. Richard Greenberg's text is generously monologued and staunchly delivered. Lott often takes a little run-up to her lines, and the show periodically comes to a halt so that she can grab her guitar and sing." The Sunday Times
"It can be a worry when a show is billed largely on the leading actor, especially when it's a big name aimed at getting bums on seats. But Pixie Lott, best known as a singer, fully explores the complexities of the main role in this slick production. Lott's blonde Holly Golightly takes Truman Capote's enigmatic character literally back to her roots and away from Audrey Hepburn's iconic screen interpretation. This production, a play with songs rather than a musical, is a much darker take on the tale of a country girl turned New York socialite. The slick set moves between apartments belonging to Holly and the narrator ('Fred'), through a clever set device. Unlike in the film when Holly ends up in the arms of 'Fred', here we are left wondering what has befallen Holly - an enigma to the last. And it's a much furrier actor who steals the show, with Miss Golightly's excitingly named Cat played by an actual cat." The Sunday Mirror
"Even on paper it wasn't a good idea to cast pop poppet and Strictly sensation Pixie Lott as Holly Golightly, Truman Capote's enigmatic socialite immortalised on screen by Audrey Hepburn. Lott has made a career on the back of a wholesome, girl next door sexuality that's entirely unsuited to Golightly's other-worldly, dangerous charms. Dauntingly, she's never acted before. More worryingly, a Broadway run of this new version by Richard Greenberg - based on the original novella rather than the film - ran for 38 performances. So the odds are stacked against Lott - and she fails to beat them. Not referencing Hepburn, Lott turns Golightly's bewitching vulnerability into a fleshy, uncomplicated girlishness as she entertains half of Manhattan, much to the intrigue and torment of her narrator neighbour 'Fred'. For all her to-die-for wardrobe and powerful singing voice, there is a fatal ordinariness about her that kills the role dead. It's not all her fault. Greenberg's literal-minded adaptation has none of the ethereal beauty of Capote's original, while Nikolai Foster's dull production suffers from the delusion that sticking an iron staircase on stage and bunging in a jazz soundtrack is enough to evoke New York's poetry. It's not... This show is too long, too often wrong, and far from top banana." The London Metro
Breakfast at Tiffany's in London at the Haymarket Theatre previewed from 30 June 2016, opened on 28 July 2016 and closed on 17 September 2016.