This is the second adaptation of Truman Capote’s 1958 novella seen at the Haymarket in the space of seven years. Hailing from the Curve, Leicester, it has clearly been conceived as a vehicle for Pixie Lott but, although she works tirelessly hard on her theatrical debut, Richard Greenberg’s version is no more successful than its predecessor, or indeed the Blake Edwards movie, in capturing the deliquescent grace of Capote’s story.
Pixie Lott is almost as deliciously named as the heroine of Capote’s tale, Holly Golightly, a capricious fantasist who captures the imagination of the story’s narrator, Fred, her neighbour in a New York brownstone in wartime. Lott is never still, does more costume changes than Danny La Rue and certainly conveys Holly’s instinctive sexual ardour: “I’ve never been to bed with a writer,” she cries, spreadeagling herself over Fred’s prostrate body. But, while I admire Lott’s energy, she never captures Holly’s childlike innocence or suggests the hillbilly origins under the character’s sophisticated veneer.
It is no surprise that Lott only appears fully relaxed when she sings the numbers that Grant Olding has carefully woven into the text: Moon River, inevitably, but also People Will Say We’re In Love from Oklahoma! and a plangent lyrical ballad.
Lott, who thrums a mean guitar, is a musician to her fingertips. As an actor, she still needs to learn the art of repose. But, if there is something strenuously pointless about the enterprise, the fault lies not with Lott. Greenberg faithfully reproduces Capote’s dialogue and retains his narrative voice. He can’t however, disguise the fact that Holly is essentially a literary creation who defies plausible embodiment, even by Audrey Hepburn in the movie; nor can he convey the cryptic elegance of Capote’s writing, which announces the arrival of Holly’s friend Mag with: “She entered like a windrush, a squall of scarves and jangling gold.”
On stage, you also become aware of the limitations of Capote’s story: where Christopher Isherwood in his Berlin stories established a tension between Sally Bowles and the Nazis’ rise to power, Capote makes little of the contrast between Holly’s comparable hedonism and the action’s second world war setting. The one positive about Greenberg’s version is that it highlights the dilemma within the narrator himself: he is emotionally enthralled by Holly but physically attracted to men. At times that is somewhat overstated, as when Holly urges him to pick up a passing sailor on Brooklyn Bridge, but Matt Barber brings out the confusion in Fred’s divided soul extremely well. There is also good support from Victor McGuire as a stalwart bartender who nurses a deep affection for the prickly Holly.
The blunt truth, however, is that there is nothing essentially dramatic about Capote’s novella: there is one midpoint narrative surprise that makes us see Holly in a new light, and that’s about it. What we are left with on stage is a series of vignettes, a mechanically efficient production by Nikolai Foster and the presence of Pixie Lott. That may be enough for some. But I would rather see her in a role that gives full rein to her marvellous singing voice than as Capote’s mercurial gadfly.
- At Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, until 17 September. Box office: 020-7930 8800.
