"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a lovely, charming movie. Unfortunately, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is not a lovely, charming play. While Truman Capote's short story worked well on screen, and is considered a cinematic classic, something got lost in translation when bringing it to the stage.

Playwright Richard Greenberg ("Three Days of Rain") adapted the work into a play, but the aimless narrative doesn't help anyone. The play unecessarily starts in the 1960s, and then flashes back to the 40s, where "Fred" (Cory Michael Smith) recounts how he met and fell in love with Holly Golightly (Emilia Clarke, from TV's "Game of Thrones") while trying to start his writing career. Sure, Smith is a sympathetic narrator, but after a while, it is so unclear why he cares about Clarke's grating Golightly (the epitome of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl if ever there was one) that there's little reason for the audience to care about anyone's trials and tribulations. When the entire audience is laughing at a cat who is supposed to be in the wings instead of focusing on the play's emotional climax, there's a problem.

Further aggravating the circumstances are the shallow portrayals of the characters. Under Sean Mathias' direction, most of the actor's choices seem not to be based on character, but on unconventional enunciation of their lines. This not only makes the dialogue difficult to distinguish, but also results in the characters coming across as incomplete sketches of people, not as real, complex, fleshed-out humans. Indeed, nothing seems real in the play, be it the perplexingly-staged horseback riding scene, the ambivalence about what "Fred" really wants, or, most importantly, whatever past Golightly is running away from.

Sadly, there's not much to recommend "Breakfast at Tiffany's." While the cast and creative team have done good work on other projects, this show is not their finest moment.

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"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is playing at the Cort Theatre on Broadway (138 W. 48th St, between 6th & 7th Aves, New York, NY). Tickets are $37-$132. More information can be found at BreakfastAtTiffanysOnBroadway.com.