Naked Anna Friel goes down a treat with critics

The London theatre critics finally got to see Anna Friel last night playing Holly Golightly in the much-discussed (mainly because she appears naked on stage) new West End stage production of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's tale of a glamorous young thing's adventures in 1940s New York.

It was a role made famous by Audrey Hepburn, complete with pearls and long cigarette holder, in the 1961 film by Blake Edwards - a hard act to follow.

Most critics say Friel, who made her name in television, most recently in Pushing Daisies, managed brilliantly. But while she charmed the pants off them, the production itself was considered a letdown.

The Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer, the man who memorably described Nicole Kidman's performance as "pure theatrical Viagra" when she appeared naked on stage in The Blue Room a decade ago, led the admirers. This is "the sexiest performance in the West End" he has seen since Kidman.

"With her tousled hair, frank sensuality and a script that requires her to spend long stretches of the action in her underwear and, in one scene, nothing at all, Friel creates a thrilling frisson of eroticism," said Spencer. "But her emotional nakedness is even more spellbinding," he gallantly adds.

The Guardian's Michael Billington is also captivated by Friel. "She works hard, acts well, and even poses unselfconsciously stark naked on a chaise longue". But while Friel is "a pleasure to watch", she is no more able to embody Holly Golightly than was Hepburn - because "Holly is an essentially literary creation who exists primarily in the reader's imagination".

Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail calls Friel's performance "disconcertingly adorable" and claims to have enjoyed the "echoes" of the film. "With her smatterings of French, breathily thrown away with a frail shrug, and a gamine hairdo in the second half when Holly thinks she might settle down, there is a fair measure of Audrey Hepburn in this performance."

But even Friel's nudity couldn't save the production. Alice Jones of the Independent writes this morning of "a classic novella [turned] into a gruelling two-and-three-quarter-hour theatrical marathon".

"It's not Anna Friel's fault," she says. "Gorgeously gamine and wrapped, like a treat from Tiffany's, in an array of ever more extravagantly bowed cocktail dresses, she's a bewitching stage presence, at once perilously provocative and child-like."

The problem, says Jones, is the play. "This is a production, which unlike the divinely restless Holly Golightly, rather outstays its welcome."

In the meantime, Letts has some helpful advice for those "shallow souls" who might be thinking of buying a ticket to the Theatre Royal, Haymarket for all the wrong reasons: "Book a seat in the gods for a view of her derriere."