Reviewed 10/6/04
When I first saw Kate Mulgrew, I thought as most people did that she bore a striking resemblance to Kate Hepburn. I was not surprised when it was announced that she would portray the superstar of stage and screen in a one-woman production by Matthew Lombardo, Tea at Five. It seemed a natural choice. Based on what I saw during the opening night of Theatre League’s new season at the Orpheum Theatre, the play is a solid fit for Mulgrew, whose stage presence cements the deal along with her dead-on capturing of the essence of Hepburn’s personality. I can’t, however, tell you much about her vocal performance or the script: John Gromada’s sound design was simply atrocious, and it was hard to hear much of the evening’s performance. It was bad enough that several audience members around me complained to the management at intermission, but nothing seemed to have been done before the end of the night.
Set on the Hepburn family estate in Hartford, CT in 1938 and 1983 when Hepburn was 31 and 76, the action of the play involves Hepburn at turning points in her career. In 1938, her career seems to be over after a string of seven bad flops. Her potential comeback rests on her being called to play Scarlet O’Hara in the upcoming Gone with the Wind. She readily converses with the audience, going over a lot of known and a few unknown tidbits about how she had reached her current status. At age 76, she is about to retire from the industry and is waiting to hear the results of tests telling whether or not she has Parkinson’s. We hear more interesting tidbits, and a very notable lack of substantive information about her relationship with Spencer Tracy. Each act ends with a bit of bad news and good. There’s not much drama here. We know she won’t be playing Scarlet and that she does indeed have Parkinson’s, but the audience is there more to drop in on the Hepburn family’s traditional tea at five and to share a moment with a woman who seduced and mystified audiences for many years.
Mulgrew looks every bit of the 31 and 76 year old for these two acts. She does not overplay, capturing instead the free-spirited physicality of Hepburn and her personable-though-distant way of addressing her audience. This is not an impersonation, and that is why even when the script begins to meander and my attention waned, which happened once late in the first act and a few more times during the second, I could instead concentrate on Mulgrew’s strong technique.