By Harry Haun
21 Mar 2013

View the Entire Photo Gallery Emilia Clarke Photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

Clarke was fashionably late for her Star Entrance at the after-party in another universe of all black and all white, the elegantly renovated Edison Ballroom — and looked a vision in a black-spotted net affair whipped up by Dolce & Gabbana.

"I feel wonderful, kind of euphoric," she said on her cloud ride through the press gauntlet. "It's so incredibly fulfilling, going back to my craft, doing this play."

Director David Cromer took time off from rehearsing Igor Stravinsky (John Glover), George Balanchine (Michael Cerveris), Serge Koussevitsky (Dale Place), Sergey Sudeikin (Alvin Epstein), Nikolai Nabokov (Stephen Kunken), et al in Nikolai and the Others at the Mitzi Newhouse to look after the Smiths of Ohio — father, mother, son Chad — all there to watch Cory Michael Smith turn into a star.

"The audience tonight was insanely generous and really sweet and very supportive," Young Smith observed. What he likes about his character is that Holly is still alive in him when he starts the play's flashback 14 years after the fact. "He's still so deeply in love with this person — or at least the idea of this person so he goes back and tells their story. Whether it's to let go of her or to deal with her, to talk it out — it's his version of therapy in front of a thousand people — but I think we all know that feeling of wanting someone or longing for someone. I think that it's something everyone can relate with. That's my favorite part. The story is very sad — very tragic to me."

Smith is particularly pleased that so much of Capote's original narration was retained. "When I read the novella, I was really delighted that Greenberg had honored the book. It was a really, really lovely adaptation. And the language is very important to me. It's a treat to be able to do that. We don't get to do a lot of modern plays where people talk like this. It's kinda poetic in a way that most things aren't. It's nice."

This is the second Breakfast at Tiffany's that Sean Mathias has directed in recent years — the other was back in London by an Australian writer — and he said it doesn't get easier. "No opening nights are fun," he said when breathing returned to normal. "The scary ones are a ten. I got through with about a six. It started really well. I have no nerves in me in the early part of the evening, but you know what happens? It's not so much the show or the fact the press come out, but your friends and family all come, and you're dealing with people you deal with in your every-day life — that's harder in a way. In a way, one shouldn't come to one's openings. One should just go away. How long is it going to take me to live on this planet to learn that lesson?"

 Continued...