Breakfast At Tiffany's - Boring, Lifeless Disappointment

After seeing this play I had to watch the movie at home the next day to make sure that I still actually liked it and that it was nothing like the boring, flat show I just saw on stage.  To my relief, I do still love the movie, it has a charm to it that was somehow completely left out of the show.

The Broadway play adaption of Breakfast At Tiffany's is intentionally different from the movie.  Writer, Richard Greenberg sought to base the play more closely on Truman Capote's 1958 novella than the movie had been.  Apparently some of the dialogue has even been directly lifted from the book.  This may explain why the play seemed so lifeless... There's a reason movie and play versions of books often have their own twists.  Each is a different form of art and to be strong in each the story must be adapted for each.  A book can't simply be put into screenplay format and be called a Broadway show.

The story in the play adds in a lot of random gay themes that are not included in the movie.  This would be fine if they weren't randomly and completely nonchalantly mentioned.  In the 1940s being gay was a big deal!  I'm not sure why no one in this play acted like it.

The lead character, Holly Golightly is played by Emilia Clarke of HBO's Game of Thrones.  I don't watch Game of Thrones so I didn't know who she was before seeing the show and the play has certainly not made me a fan now.  Granted, it's extremely difficult to take a role iconically played by Audrey Hepburn and expect to be remembered or even praised for it.  I give her credit for trying and thought she was decent.  Although, her over the top voice for every word that came out of her mouth ended up hurting her performance.  I get what she was going for but her voice just made it seem like she had no real emotions and kept me from establishing any kind of connection to her character.

The male lead, Fred, is played by Cory Michael Smith.  As someone who had my expectations for Fred formed from the movie, I was extremely disappointed with his portrayal of the character.  Instead of the handsome, confident yet sweet character from the movie, who I thought was quite a heart throb, Fred is a whiney, pathetic weirdo who becomes obsessed with Holly after meeting her once.  Cory tries to put feeling into the part but ends up falling short, he also starts the play with an accent that randomly starts and stops throughout.

The biggest reaction from the audience during the show is not from the actors or the lines, but from a real cat that comes on stage to play Holly's cat.  It really serves no purpose and just caused a lot of "awwww" from everyone in the audience before the cat terrifyingly runs off stage because it probably has no idea what's going on.  I suppose when a show is as bad as this one throwing in a real cat can't make it worse, but it definitely didn't make it better either.

Oh and one more thing... for some reason in the middle of the play Emilia and Cory get naked in a bath tub.  The moment is about as unemotional as they come, except for maybe the awkward feeling the audience has as they wonder why they're naked.

Luckily I only payed $32 for this play by doing general rush.  If you're curious I would make sure you get very cheap tickets, it's definitely not worth full price.  You could probably see the second act for free if you walk in during intermission, since many of the people at the show I saw left during intermission.