Lott ticks all the boxes as Holly Golightly
Breakfast at Tiffany’s Theatre Royal Haymarket
What a meal they’ve made of opening this new stageproduction of Breakfast at
Tiffany’s, the 1958 Truman Capote novella immortalised by the 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn as the flighty New York society girl Holly Golightly.
This version, which sees pop singer Pixie Lott effectively making her theatrical debut (she was once a “sewer-kid” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the Palladium), began in Leicester in March. After yonks on tour and a month into the West End run, the critics have finally been let in. A cynic would suppose that the producers had their doubts about their leading lady and wanted to cash in on Lott’s fanbase before the harsh truth came out.
But there is no harsh truth to reveal. The 25-year-old performer 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).
There’s limited room for manoeuvre in terms of characterisation: Golightly is an enigma, the diamond-like object of male fascination (she in turn hankering after the real glittering thing, gazing through the window of Tiffany’s jewellers at the start here, just as in the film, pastry in hand). She is witty, insouciant and promiscuous – well, maybe: how much she yields to the men she keeps wrapped around her little finger is largely left to our imagination. She is “a stranger who’s a friend” agree the two most besotted bystanders in her life – barman Joe and the aspiring unnamed writer (nicknamed “Fred” by Golightly) who lives upstairs and becomes as close to a lover as his furtive homosexual nature permits and her tactile, yet elusive, presence allows.
The last time the play was done in the West End, seven years ago, Anna Friel made headlines for appearing on stage with nothing on; here, peak titillation is reached when Holly is found in a high-sided bathtub with Matt Barber’s “Fred” – you don’t see a lot of Lott.
Much of the newbie actress’s energy is spent slipping in and out of beautiful dresses backstage. Her remaining vivacity is dispensed on flashing smiles, pouting lips and raising her eyebrows in an attitude of coquettish amusement. At limited moments, she’s allowed to sing – the Henry Mancini song specially written for the film gets a smoky-voiced, seductively drawn out rendition, with Lott strumming her own guitar accompaniment, as if at some unplugged session. Nice.
My general wish was that director Nikolai Foster had taken more experimental liberties. My more particular desire, given the conventional path taken, was that he had obtained greater narrative clarity from the American adaptor Richard Greenberg – whose script, though faithful to the book, was judged rather wanting in its first Broadway incarnation. If you haven’t seen the film, the significance, say, of Holly’s weekly visits to see “Sally” Tomato at Sing-Sing prison would breeze in one ear and out the other, leaving you none the wiser.
Matthew Wright’s set is as goodlooking as it is functional, but makes some of the cast appear overexposed (poor Naomi Cranston is tasked with a glaringly unfunny drunk scene as Holly’s pal Mag). The one cast-member who appears fully at home is Bob the thespian rescue cat, playing Holly’s rashly abandoned moggy Slob; the adorable creature steals the show at the end by padding along the back of the stage.
Even the Downing Street cats don’t have that level of chutzpah.