Say ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ and most people will think of Audrey Hepburn in her best known screen role, that of Holly Golightly. Very loosely adapted by George Axelrod from Truman Capote’s novella, that Hollywood version sanitised many of the most provocative aspects of the book, and omitted the most controversial issues altogether. This stage version, adapted by Olivier Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg and directed by Nikolai Foster, is much more faithful to the original tale, and does not shy away from Holly’s complete disregard for conventional morality.
Fresh from her success in Strictly Come Dancing, Georgia May Foote makes her stage debut as Holly, and she certainly succeeds in capturing Holly’s amoral vivacity. Capote intended his ‘New York geisha’ to be captivating, capricious and utterly shameless. Petite and bursting with self-assertion, Foote is entirely convincing as this good-time society girl that older men find irresistible. Her American accent is pretty good too. But Holly’s apparent devil-may-care confidence in this glitzy world of non-stop cocktail parties hides the fact that she is escaping an impoverished past in the backwoods. That she is a girl whose childhood was deeply impoverished is an aspect of her character that is not so convincingly portrayed, though we get a touching glimpse of it when Foote picks up a guitar and sings a plaintive country song.
Holly’s story is told in flashback by a struggling writer called Fred, who is a fellow tenant in a Manhattan apartment block. Fred is played by Matt Barber, an actor that many will recognize as Downton Abbey’s Atticus Aldridge. Barber is very good at conveying Fred’s bemused fascination for Holly, though he tends to deliver his passages of narration in too declamatory a manner. A rather too aggressive vocal style tends to obscure Fred’s sensitivity both as a writer and as a young man trying to come to terms with his own sexuality.
There are three standout performances in the minor roles. Victor McGuire is excellent as Joe Bell, the worldly-wise barman who has seen it all, yet who has a platonic love for Holly and a touching desire to protect her from her own recklessness. Melanie La Barrie is underused as Mme. Spanella, outraged by Holly’s chaotic lifestyle. She also appears as the unyieldingly stern boss of a magazine, sacking the hapless Fred with the chilling line, ‘We only make exceptions for the exceptional’. The most touching performance of the evening comes from Robert Calvert as Doc, a figure from Holly’s rural past. His unadorned simplicity is a welcome contrast to all the brash artificiality of New York’s social whirl.
So there is much to admire in the acting, but does Breakfast At Tiffany’s work as a stage play? Not entirely, I fear. Its anecdotal style is fine in print, but these characters are creatures of the page, not the stage. The basic ingredients of the tale are very similar to those of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye To Berlin, and Capote’s debt to his friend Isherwood is clear, for Holly Golightly is a dead ringer for Sally Bowles. Goodbye To Berlin is best known today as the source material for Cabaret, and I had anticipated that this show too would be at least in part a musical adaptation, as it is billed as having ‘memorable songs from the era’. In actual fact songs do not feature strongly, though we are given Moon River in the second half; not, of course, a song from the era, but welcome nevertheless. Indeed, there is no strong sense of ‘the era’ in this show. It is the 1940’s, but the war seems very distant. Its only impact on Fred’s life appears to be that he has difficulty in hiring taxicabs.
This story is less substantial than Isherwood’s, and its lack of depth limits what can be achieved in a stage adaptation. The original is too fragmentary, too implausible and too reliant upon Capote’s dazzling prose style. Breakfast At Tiffany’s is a worthy attempt to bring Holly Golightly and her sparkly, amoral world to the live stage. Though it does not entirely succeed, there is certainly much to enjoy in this show, for there are some memorable performances. I have found myself humming Moon River all morning! ★★★☆☆ Mike Whitton 28th September 2016
