Breakfast at Tiffany’s, already a classic as a film and book, is set to hit the West End stage later this year. The elegant photography released to promote the show’s September launch harks back to those iconic images of Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film.
Attempting to fill Hepburn’s heels is home-grown star Anna Friel, making her West End debut playing the enigmatic Holly Golightly. Friel is best known for her role as Beth Jordache in Brookside. She will be joined on stage by co-star Joseph Cross, fresh from big screen success with last year’s award winning movie Milk.
Between now and the opening of the production Anna Friel has to learn to play the guitar and be ready to sing three other songs in the musical. With that in mind Friel warns that her Holly “will have a lot more rough edges than Audrey’s”.
The rest of the team is equally impressive; Samual Admanson produces, fresh from the recent success of the stunning English language adaptation of Almidover’s All About My Mother at the Old Vic, and the show is helmed by celebrated director Sean Mathias. Breakfast at Tiffany’s will play at the London Theatre Royal Haymarket, which currently hosts Waiting for Godot with Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, one of the West End’s hottest tickets and also directed by Mathias.
While drawing inspiration from the film Samual Adamanson is keen to provide a fresh perspective, taking more direct cues from Truman Capote’s original novella and moving the action back to 1943. Fans of the movie need not be too distraught though; they’ve kept Moon River in!
