Tea with Kate Mulgrew's Katharine Hepburn
By David Brooks Andrews, Standard-Times correspondent
Kate Mulgrew has been packing the theaters with her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn in the one-woman show "Tea at Five" by Matthew Lombardo.
The show was sold out before it opened at Hartford Stage. It drew enormous crowds in Ms. Mulgrew's hometown of Cleveland. And it packed the house recently on the opening night of its two-week run at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge.
The show has a powerful two-pronged appeal. "Star Trek" fans (AKA Trekkies) have been showing up to see the actress who created the television role of Captain Kathryn Janeway. But undoubtedly more people are drawn by the desire to see a different Katharine -- the elegant, self-contained Yankee movie star who's etched so clearly in the minds of millions of Americans.
Ms. Mulgrew does a brilliant job of capturing the physical movements, vocal mannerisms, and even appearance of Ms. Hepburn, first as the young movie star in 1938 who's gone through a series of flops causing her to wonder if her career is prematurely over, and then as the septuagenarian star in 1983 who has nearly completed her extraordinarily successful film and stage career.
It doesn't require a huge leap to imagine that you're watching Ms. Hepburn herself, who's now in her mid-90s and no longer appears publicly. As the younger Ms. Hepburn, Ms. Mulgrew takes command of the stage and the replicated interior of the Hepburn "cottage" in Fenwick, Conn., with movements that are so familiar.
Curled up on the couch, draped luxuriously across an arm chair, strutting across the floor with her knees leading the way as she imitates another actress, throwing her arms into the air as if the world were her oyster, and clutching a white shag carpet as if she were riding on the back of a polar bear. All these actions are so familiar that it seems obvious Ms. Mulgrew has been studying documentary footage and films of the great actress.
Then there's the unmistakable voice with its husky, patrician tone and the sharp inflections that Ms. Mulgrew imitates so precisely. In Act I, Katherine Hepburn explains that her voice coach told her that "to be a star you will need a voice all your own." Together they created the voice that became the actress' trademark.
All of this seems remarkable enough, until Ms. Mulgrew appears as the older Ms. Hepburn, with white hair piled on her head, her voice even more husky and distinctive, her head bobbing slightly, and her leg in a temporary cast after a minor auto accident. To be able to capture Ms. Hepburn at two such different periods in her life seems like a double feat. No doubt director John Tillinger deserves credit for helping Ms. Mulgrew to be so accurate.
In many ways, this impersonation is more compelling than the play itself, which tends to feel somewhat like a staged version of an article from a glossy film magazine. Most of the stories told, with a couple of exceptions, probably wouldn't hold our attention if they were not connected to such a famous person.
The framing device of the first act is that Ms. Hepburn desperately wants to star in "Gone with the Wind" and is waiting for a call from her agent to tell her that she has the part. Of course, we know where that's heading.
Throughout the play, Ms. Hepburn pulls no punches in her self-deprecation, in a way that exposes the admirable steel at her core. In the first act, she reads us withering reviews of her life and early films, calling her Katharine of Arrogance, saying how she returned home with "her 14-carat tail tucked between her legs," while one reviewer writes of her performance in the Broadway production of "The Lake," "Be like a pebble and skip 'The Lake.'"
The combination of admitted self-absorption and self-deprecation offers more wit and humor in the first act than any real revelation of character.
In spite of all the talk -- the play's title is based on her family's daily teas when they talked about everything, including sex -- the first act never really cracks the surface of Ms. Hepburn's character. Much of it feels fairly gossipy, albeit clever and witty.
The second act is considerably more moving, particularly when she tells of her favorite brother's suicide at the age of 15 and how as a young girl she cut him down from the rafters of her aunt's home with pinking shears.
Her father's repression of his feelings when she cut her hair and dressed in her brother's clothes one evening in an effort to fill the huge hole is heart-wrenching.
She gives us a few glimpses into her decades-long affair with Spencer Tracy, revealing how much she sacrificed during his alcoholic binges and on one occasion when he put her down unmercifully in front of friends.
Nevertheless, they obviously loved each other intensely. As the mistress, it was her job to call Tracy's wife and tell her that he had died. When Mrs. Tracy arrived, she said to Ms. Hepburn, "I always thought you were just a rumor." It sounds like a line Ms. Hepburn herself might have delivered in one of her films.
Tony Straiges' reconstruction of the living room of the Hepburn family home is so realistic with high wooden beams, a brick fireplace, and a bank of windows through which we see rain and snow that it almost feels as if a camera has brought us into her home.
This is a play that taps right into our culture's fascination with movie stars and our hunger for morsels from their private lives. It's little wonder that there are rumors it may be heading to Broadway.
"TEA AT FIVE"
WHAT: "A one-woman show based on the life of Katharine Hepburn.
WHERE: Loeb Drama Center, American Repertory Theatre, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge.
WHEN: Through Sept. 22.
TICKETS: Range from $32 to $62 and can be purchased by calling (617) 547-8300.
This story appeared on Page B3 of The Standard-Times on September 16, 2002.
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