Review - Breakfast at Tiffany's at Milton Keynes Theatre

It is difficult to admit but I have never seen the original film that defined Audrey Hepburn's career.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is based on Truman Capote’s novella and is set in New York in 1943. Fred, a young writer from Louisiana, meets Holly Golightly, a charming, vivacious and utterly elusive good-time girl. 

Everyone falls in love with Holly – including Fred.  But Fred is poor, and Holly’s other suitors include a playboy millionaire and the future president of Brazil. As war rages on in Europe, Holly begins to fall in love with Fred – just as her past catches up with her.

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It’s an interesting and stylish adaptation of this piece and there is a lot to commend it. But there was something about the fast pace of the dialogue combined with the New York accent that made it difficult to understand what some of the actors were saying.

For such a dialogue driven piece, it made the story quite difficult to follow, even though it was quite thin. And it was pretty much a uniformed problem among all the performers.

There is a lot to admire in Matthew Wright’s set, even if one bit of it did come down at the wrong time and startled some of the actors.

And there was a lot of appreciation for Bob the Cat playing the cat.

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But sadly, given the type of story it was, you rarely wanted to spend any time with the characters as they were all to a certain extent irritating and unlikeable. But that is a fault with the story rather than the production.

It did lack a certain lightness where a little more might have provided some much needed relief and given the darker aspects a little more prominence.

I suspect that many in the audience will compare this to the film and imagine that sadly, the comparisons won’t be favourable.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s can be seen until Saturday. For tickets, call the box office on 0844 871 7652 or visit www.atgtickets.co.uk/miltonkeynes