I
suppose it’s possible to deliver a character study play without story tension,
but I don’t know of an example. I think, rather, of Butley and Otherwise Engaged by Simon Gray, which seem to be day-in-the-life portraits but are really
ruminations on private turmoil: Butley’s a college professor who needs to make
everybody else miserable in an exhaustive attempt to keep change from invading
his life and validate his own sense of failure; and Simon Hench wants to be left
alone to listen to his classical recording of Wagner music, not caring what
relationships he destroys to preserve his desire for isolation. Neither of
those things sound like much, but each is an objective that needs to overcome
barriers. Thus: conflict. Alas, Richard Greenberg’s adaptation of
Truman Capote’s novella Breakfast
at Tiffany’s has
very little conflict that lasts beyond the length of a vignette. Indeed, the
play presents (it seems a misnomer to use the word dramatizes) a series of vignettes (anecdotal situations, if you
will, since the play is narrated by the young man-observer is (Cory Michael
Smith) designed to create a portrait of an enigmatic, alluring but
vulnerable young woman—literature and filmdom’s iconic Holly Golightly (Emilia
Clarke). The intention is one of delicacy
and painting in gentle brushstrokes, but the result is a soporific enterprise
with almost no forward propulsive energy. Add to this listless direction (by Sean
Mathias) and lackluster casting of the
leads (some excellent character people like Suzanne Bertish and George Wendt, among others, are doing what they can, but mostly
abandoned in a sea of dullness) and it’s hard to imagine that any more
misguided choices could have been made, almost across the board.
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