Pixie Lott Gives It Her Best

There are few people that could cast as large a shadow as Audrey Hepburn in her prime, especially in her role as the original girl-about-town in the vintage classic Breakfast at Tiffany's. While pop starlet Pixie Lott certainly gives it her best, there are some roles that require enough chutzpah to reinvent an ingrained classic whilst toppling those heavy expectations. Sadly, Miss Lott's revival misses the mark completely.

Based on Capote's iconic novel, the production is set in the Big Apple in the early 1940s and is consequently plagued by bad American accents left right and centre, making it difficult to keep up with the helter-skelter onstage action. Cafe society girl Holly Golightly flits from one quirky thought, sugar-daddy and fashionable venue to the next, much to the amazement of her new neighbour and narrator Fred. The fact that the show has a narrator moving the story along and still lacks clarity speaks volumes.

I don't want to dwell on Pixie Lott's performance too much, but seeing as it's such a pivotal part, my memory only serves to recall the mountain of dialogue she wasn't quite able to command - it came across as if learned by rote and recited rather blandly considering her overabundance of quirky Golightly mannerisms and high-society drawl that got in the way of pace, timing and much needed subtlety. She certainly shone when she picked up a guitar and sang Moon River, but this and two other musical interludes just seemed out of place and tacked on for Lott’s fans’ benefit.

At any show, there's usually a short period of time when the audience holds their breath, waiting for the expectations to be met or exceeded by the brilliance unfolding before them, at which point they exhale and get wondrously absorbed into the story. It was only after the curtain had fallen that I let out a sigh of relief.

View our show pages for more information about Breakfast at Tiffany's, Theatre Royal Haymarket.