Review Roundup: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S Opens on Broadway - All the Reviews!

Tony Award winning playwright Richard Greenberg's new play, Breakfast at Tiffany's opens at the Cort Theatre (138 W 48th Street) tonight, March 20, 2013. Directed by Sean Mathias, the stage adaption of Truman Capote's classic novella will star Emilia Clarke (HBO's "Game of Thrones") in the iconic role of 'Holly Golightly,' Cory Michael Smith as 'Fred,' and George Wendt as 'Joe Bell.'

Based on Truman Capote's most beloved masterwork, Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's is set in New York City in 1943. 'Fred', a young writer from Louisiana, meets Holly Golightly, a charming, vivacious and utterly elusive good-time girl.

The creative team for Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's includes Tony Award-winner Derek McLane (Scenic Design), three-time Academy Award-winner and current nominee Colleen Atwood (Costume Design), Tony Award-winner Peter Kaczorowski (Lighting Design), Wendall K. Harrington (Projection Design) andRob Milburn and Michael Bodeen (Music and Sound Design).

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: Holly Golightly does not. Go lightly, that is. The new stage adaptation of "Breakfast at Tiffany's," Truman Capote's beloved portrait of a glamorous waif in 1940s New York, moves with a distinctly leaden step, as if it dreaded what might be waiting around every dark corner of the sinister city it portrays....Mr. Greenberg's adaptation incorporates far more of Capote's words than the Edwards film did, with shimmering passages of reminiscence that come directly from the book. Yet no matter how finespun the original ingredients, this particular soufflé seems doomed never to rise.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press: The cat is just one of the problems in this ill-conceived and poorly executed adaptation of a classic American tale that opened Wednesday at the Cort Theatre...The many scenes stubbornly refuse to add up to much and it remains as flat as Golightly is supposed to be effervescent. Richard Greenberg's adaptation of Truman Capote's classic 1958 novella is extremely faithful - some chunks of dialogue have been lifted directly from the book - without adding much. Actually, director Sean Mathias has tacked on more complexity to scenes for reasons that are unclear...Come to think of it, maybe the cat can be forgiven for bad behavior. It has, after all, had to sit through too much of this.

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: Five days before the show's premiere, Sean Mathias sat in front of me at "Breakfast at Tiffany's." The British director had a pen in his hand and a notebook in his lap. By rights, Mathias should've been drafting an apology letter for stirring up this half-baked rehash of Truman Capote's singularly quirky book about Holly Golightly.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, NY Post: Clarke captures that survivor's drive, as well as the aching vulnerability that bubbles up under the cool, sophisticated exterior. This Holly is still in her teens, after all - a kid who had to grow up fast, she's putting on airs. "She's such a goddamn liar," says her Hollywood agent pal, OJ Berman (Lee Wilkof), "maybe she don't know herself anymore."

Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly: Greenberg's entire first act is a slog, bogged down with dreary exposition and the introduction of far too many quirky but uninteresting characters. (Sean Mathias' listless direction does the script no favors.) It's telling that the supporting player who makes the strongest impression is Vito Vincent, who plays Holly's adoptive feline companion, Cat (Vito shares the role with Montie and Moo). There are too many scenes that just sit there, failing to delight and robbing the play of any semblance of narrative momentum. At one point, Smith's Fred even reads aloud from his journal: 'Time continues to pass without meaning.' Amen, brother. C-

Adam Feldman, Time Out: After a long gestation and a difficult labor, including a last-minute funding scare, Breakfast at Tiffany's arrives on Broadway meager and stillborn. Here is a story that-in both Truman Capote's 1958 novella and Blake Edwards's 1961 film-relies on the restive charm of its central figure: Holly Golightly, a beauteous young courtesan in 1940s New York, who conceals her hillbilly roots beneath a blithe, insouciant manner and a cultivated voice flecked with faux French. "She isn't a phony because she's a real phony," as someone explains to the writer who lives next door to her. "She believes all this crap she believes." In the Broadway version, she never seems to believe it for a moment; Breakfast at Tiffany's is phony through and through.

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