Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Friel and Cross star
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
SEAN Mathias will direct Samuel Adamson’s new stage adaptation of Truman Capote’s classic novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which opens at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on September 29, 2009 (previews from September 9).
The second production in Mathias’ Theatre Royal Haymarket Season, Breakfast at Tiffany’s will star Anna Friel as Holly Golightly and Joseph Cross as William ‘Fred’ Parsons and feature Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s Oscar-winning song Moon River.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s is set in 1943 in New York City, where William ‘Fred’ Parsons, a young writer from Louisiana, meets Miss Holly Golightly, a charming, vivacious and utterly elusive good-time girl.
Everyone falls in love with Holly, including William – but he is poor, and Holly needs rich. Will she marry Rusty, playboy millionaire? Or José, the future president of Brazil? As war rages in Europe, Holly begins to fall in love with William – and then her past catches up with her…
A film version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s was released in 1961. Directed by Blake Edwards, it starred Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal and Mickey Rooney, and went on to win two Academy Awards.
Anna Friel‘s theatre work includes Lulu for the Almeida Theatre Company both in London and New York and Patrick Marber’s Closer on Broadway. She is however, best known for her screen credits which include the recent Pushing Daises (as Charlotte Charles), for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series.
This summer, she will star opposite Will Ferrell in the film Land of the Lost. Other forthcoming film projects include London Boulevard with Keira Knightly and Colin Farrell, and Jacob Estes’ black comedy The Details with James McAvoy, Elizabeth Banks and Laura Linney.
Speaking about Breakfast at Tiffany’s, she said: “Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s has always been one of my favourite novels and I am delighted to have been given both the opportunity to play one of my all time favourite heroines, Holly Golightly, and to be returning home to the London stage.”
American actor Joseph Cross is best known for his roles as Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors, as Franklin Sousley in the Clint Eastwood war drama Flags of our Fathers, and most recently, as Dick Pabich in the Gus Van Sant feature film Milk, in which he starred opposite Sean Penn. His theatre credits include John Guare’s Landscape of the Body and Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (as Orin Mannon).
The opening production in Sean Mathias‘ season as Artistic Director of the Theatre Royal Haymarket Company is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which stars Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Simon Callow and Ronald Pickup.
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Mathias’ other London credits include Talking Heads, A Little Night Music, Antony and Cleopatra, Suddenly Last Summer, Shoreditch Madonna, Les Parents Terribles, Design For Living, Bent and Ring Round the Moon.
One of America’s most famous authors Truman Capote (1924 – 1984) wrote short stories, novels, plays and essays, as well as working for the New Yorker, which provided him with his first and last regular job. In 1948, his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, was published to international critical acclaim. His other iconic works include In Cold Blood, Music for Chameleons and Answered Prayers.
Samuel Adamson‘s plays include Some Kind of Bliss (Trafalgar Studios), All About My Mother, from Almodóvar (Old Vic), Southwark Fair and Mrs Affleck from Ibsen (National Theatre), Grace Note (Old Vic) and Clocks and Whistles (Bush Theatre Company). In 2005, he contributed to the Old Vic’s 24 Hour Plays and in 2007 to the Almeida’s A Chain Play.
He has also written versions of Ibsen’s Pillars of the Community (National Theatre) and A Doll’s House (Southwark Playhouse); Chekhov’s Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard (Oxford Stage Company); and Schnitzler’s Professor Bernhardi (Dumbfounded Theatre).
Presented by Chambord and produced by Colin Ingram by arrangement with The Theatre Royal Haymarket Company, Breakfast at Tiffany’s will have set and costume design by Anthony Ward.
The production is initially booking until January 9, 2010.