Anna Friel 'pierces our heart' in Breakfast At Tiffany's

By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail

Updated: 04:40 EST, 30 September 2009

Anna Friel is disconcertingly adorable as Holly Golightly.

I say 'disconcertingly' because Holly is such a fluff-ball with her butterfly brain and lashes. She embodies everything we can not have, the tease, the brittle splinter who pierces our heart.

If sensible, we would have  nothing to do with this criminally-inclined fantasist. Miss Friel, to  her credit, makes that impossible.   

Anna, pictured here with co-star John Ramm (Doc Golightly), makes it impossible to 'have nothing to do with the criminally inclined fantasist' that is Holly

Anna, pictured here with co-star John Ramm (Doc Golightly), makes it impossible to 'have nothing to do with the criminally inclined fantasist' that is Holly

With her smatterings of French, breathily thrown away with a frail  shrug, and a gamine hairdo in the second half when Holly thinks she  might settle down, there is a fair measure of Audrey Hepburn in this  performance.

The show is making a great deal of noise about how it is returning to the spirit of Truman Capote's story rather than the celebrated film. Happily, this is not so. There are plenty of echoes of the film.     

Shallow souls will derive excitement from the fact that beautiful Miss Friel appears in her birthday suit during one scene (book a seat  in the gods for a view of her derriere, by the way) but the skill of her performance is that she clothes Holly with all the layers of fiction that force her to lead a transitory life. 

Holly is a rootless Zuleika Dobson, forever escaping her past, failing to find continuity.  It requires onion layers of coquettishness to keep us interested in  this 'real phoney'.

The staging takes a while to settle down. There are two horrible, white, metal  staircases which give the thing a sterile quality. 

With her smatterings of French, breathily thrown away with a frail shrug, and a gamine hairdo in the second half, there's a fair measure of Audrey Hepburn in this performance

With her smatterings of French, breathily thrown away with a frail shrug, and a gamine hairdo in the second half, there's a fair measure of Audrey Hepburn in this performance

Anthony Ward's design is gimmicky and unromantic. Joseph Cross is underpowered in the early scenes as William, the  writer who falls in love with Holly.

Mr Cross slowly grew on me at  last night's opening and both he and Miss Frield deserve a medal for  ignoring a fidgety audience seemingly peopled by consumptives.    

James Dreyfus does a good turn as Holly's agent friend O.J. Berman and Dermot Crowly has his moments as a soft-hearted barman.

The  production also includes the tallest actress I have seen, one  Gwendoline Christie, who plays a society friend of Holly but may well  have been pressed into service as a lighting ladder during the  technical rehearsals.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote, Theatre Royal Haymarket

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