"Breakfast at Tifaney's"

[gymman]

Posted: 7/7/05 at 10:27pm

Does anyone know why this failed? Mary Tyler Moore and Richard Chamberlain were pretty big stars?

[gymman]

Posted: 7/7/05 at 10:32pm

Tiffeney's--sorry!

[musicnmath]

Posted: 7/7/05 at 10:38pm

Tiffany's?

[Dollypop]

Posted: 7/7/05 at 11:33pm

Big stars do not make good shows.

I saw one of the few previews this show gave on Broadway before it closed. It was ghastly. Edward Albee wrote the book and it was a ton of lead. It was another case where there was no easy blend of script and song. The show abruptly halted whenever a number was sung. Both Chamberlain and Moore had weak voices.

The dialogue was so stilted that members of the audience were talking back to the actors. I vaguely recall a scene where Moore was in a hospital bed and asked the rhetorical question, "What should I do now?" and someone in the rear orchestra shouted out,"Close the show". Two days later that's what happened.

[Hairspraydoll]

Posted: 7/8/05 at 1:07am

I read an article that Mariah Carey's dream is to do Breakfast at Tiffany's. Scary!

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 7/8/05 at 6:36am

Book was the pits . When you call in Edward Albee to rewrite a book for a musical, you know you are in trouble .That is like putting a box around the set designers name in the Playbill

Albee writing the book is like making a musical out of Virginia Wolff. Hey why not with Nathan Lane as George & Kathleen Turner as Martha. Now that I would pay money to see - her going toe to toe with him. He would be eaten alive

[OtherDaryl]

Posted: 7/8/05 at 9:22am

I've read several accounts that mentioned audiences being supremely pissed off that "Moon River" wasn't included in the score.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/8/05 at 9:33am

There is a wonderful account of this disaster in David Merrick's biography "The Abominable Showman." Merrick had wanted to do a musical version of Casablanca, and his collaborator (I forget who) said that would be hopeless--it would be easier to do a musical of "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Merrick agreed and immediately contacted Capote for the rights. When Albee was brought in to re-write the book, he wrote long "Albee-esque" Monologues. When Merrick told him that the dialogue in a musical was merely a bridge to get from one song to another Albee apparently replied "Not in an EDWARD ALBEE musical!" It was at that point the cast began to refer to the musical as "Who's Afraid of Holly Golightly?"

In typical Merrick style, he took out ads in the NY papers saying he was closing "Tiffany's" to 'spare the audience tremendous boredom.'

[twogaab2]

Posted: 7/8/05 at 10:22am

I have a feeling that they were trying to avoid the movie's script (which worked) and wrote, wrote, re-wrote and re-wrote their own (which didn't). Heard a tape of the last version (which was a mess), neither actor was up to characters they were given (to give them credit, they had their work cut out for them with all the re-writes) and by this time the plot was very fuzzy (who was this narator guy, was he in the plot, controling it-WHAT!).

Anyway, it might have worked if they just had stuck to the movie script.

Updated On: 7/8/05 at 10:22 AM

[gymman]

Posted: 7/8/05 at 11:12am

Thanks so much, everyone...
I totally forgot that Albee (!)wrote the book. I sure would have loved to see this mess.
Mariah Carey?! Oh, my...

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 11/12/05 at 9:41pm

There's some nice pics from the show on this Rich Chamberlain site

http://richard-chamberlain.info/breakfast/

Would've been a trip to see what it actually was like.