monkee does 'Tea at Five'
This is not a review. Knowing as little as I do about Katharine Hepburn, and theatre in general, I'm not really qualified to review this play. I was, however, lucky enough to see it, and I wanted to share my thoughts with my fellow Kate Mulgrew/Captain Janeway fans. Incidentally, if you're planning on going, be warned – I mention some of the events of the play in detail here.
Before I went to Hartford, I did, at least, manage to read one of Katharine Hepburn's books, 'The Making of The African Queen.' It was an odd little book. She may be one of the greatest actresses of all time, but she doesn't write particularly well. Her sentences are short and choppy, and that's when they're sentences at all. Still, I was able to come away with memorable, vivid impressions of Hepburn, the times, and the making of 'The African Queen,' and I suppose you can't ask for much more than that, right?
In her heyday, Katharine Hepburn was a tough cookie at a time when tough cookies weren't necessarily encouraged or admired. She was a movie star back when there really was such a thing, and she expected to be treated as such. She was driven, particular, and unforgiving in her attention to quality and detail. She was also touchingly vulnerable at times. She had an amazing, dynamic personality (and still does, no doubt).
She had a personality, I thought, not unlike a certain actress that I knew of. Although there is, indeed, a striking physical resemblance between Hepburn and Kate Mulgrew, there's more to it than that. Their throaty voices, their vibrant personalities, and even some of their respective backgrounds are quite similar. Both women come from democratic 'society' families, or at least that's my impression, and apparently both women faced difficult reproductive decisions as young adults. Finally, both Hepburn and Mulgrew claim to have had one 'great love' in their lives – for Hepburn, of course, it was Spencer Tracy, and Mulgrew has said the same of Tim Hagan.
So, no big deal. All Mulgrew had to do was go up on stage and be herself for two hours, right? Not quite. If anything, I suspect their similarities made playing the role even more of a challenge for Mulgrew. Hepburn is so well known – even people like me who haven't seen many of her films know at least a little about her style. Katharine Hepburn is deeply embedded in popular culture. In order for Mulgrew to pull this off, she had to be utterly convincing. She had to get up on that stage and make the audience forget that she wasn't Hepburn.
And damned if she didn't do it!
Enter Stage Left – First Impressions: From the moment she strode on stage in her black bathing suit and Hollywood hair, she had me convinced. THIS sure as hell wasn't any Captain Janeway I ever saw! This may sound cliched, but there's no other way to say it. The woman glows onstage and in-person. She's a beautiful woman, but she's also got a spark, just like Hepburn.
Act I: The first act is set in 1938, when Hepburn is just 31 years old. She's retreated to her family's cottage on Long Island Sound after filming seven successive flops. She's been labeled 'box office poison,' and, to add insult to injury, learns early on that she has not gotten a role that she desperately wanted (Scarlett O'Hara). Her bitterness, anger, and even a little uncertainty come through, but she also faces the adversity with wry humor and grace. She addresses the audience as if they're in the drawing room with her – a room she fully inhabits by lounging on the couch, pouncing on the phone, looking out the window at an approaching storm, poking at a fire in the hearth, and, of course, serving up tea at five, a family tradition. She discusses her career, her family, and her love life with complete candor. At one point, she even pokes fun at the unrealistic dialog in one of her flops, 'The Lake.' "The calla lillies are in bloom," she deadpans, rolling her eyes.
The first act ends on an upbeat note as Hepburn receives a script in the mail for a little play called 'The Philadelphia Story.' The audience knows, even though Hepburn doesn't, that things are definitely looking up, despite the approach of the tropical storm, which has turned into a full-fledged hurricane.
Mulgrew did an incredible job with the mercurial changes in mood and topic. It must be so difficult to remain focused when you are the only one on stage. There's no one else there to hold the attention of the audience. At one point, she had to go behind a screen and change her clothes, while still performing. She even pulled that off! The audience was rapt throughout the whole thing – I didn't even hear anyone shuffling around. She had us all in the palm of her hand, and as everyone stood for intermission, the buzz was positive.
Act II: To be honest, I was dreading Act II. I was afraid that watching anyone imitate Katharine Hepburn at 73, with Parkinson's Disease, was going to be quite painful. It could so easily have fallen flat, or worse. I needn't have worried. In fact, after watching Mulgrew portray an elderly Captain Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager's series finale, I should even have known better! I liked her even better as the elder Hepburn.
As the second act opens, we are looking at Hepburn from behind, as she pokes the fire and mutters to herself. When she turns around, the audience gasps – the transformation is that startling. Make-up and wardrobe deserves only a fraction of the credit, too, because this clearly came from within Mulgrew. Something happens to women as they become older. They gain a certain perspective, self-assurance, and wisdom. They become more centered. I've seen this in photographs of Katharine Hepburn from the last couple of decades, and Mulgrew captured it perfectly. Her performance didn't seem like a parody at all – rather, it honored Hepburn. She was luminous.
In this act, Hepburn has again retreated to her family cottage, after sustaining a minor injury in a car accident. She recounts the accident with her trademark self-deprecating humor, observing that it was a good thing the tree was there, otherwise she'd have ended up in the lake, just like one of the characters in the aforementioned play by the same name. "Can you imagine the irony at my funeral?" she asks the audience. "Calla lillies EVERYWHERE!"
At this point, the play becomes much more serious. Hepburn talks to the audience about her tumultuous relationship with Spenser Tracy, her equally complex feelings about her parents, getting old, and, in the play's climactic scene, her much-beloved older brother's suicide when she was just a teenager. She describes climbing the stairs to an attic bedroom at her aunt's house, and finding his body hanging from a beam. She says, "As I cut him down with a pair of pinking shears, I noticed that his feet were dragging on the ground, and I thought 'All he had to do was...stand up'." There wasn't a dry eye in the house when Mulgrew delivered this line, because by now, the audience knew enough about Hepburn to understand how that would be incomprehensible to someone with a fighting spirit like hers. She would have stood up, just as she did so many times throughout her life.
The Moral of the Story: The play ends with Hepburn phoning someone and accepting yet another role. I thought she must be referring to 'On Golden Pond,' but as it turns out, it was Warren Beatty on the phone, and the film was 'Love Affair,' another flop. At first, it seemed to me to be an odd way to end the play, but now I see that it was perfectly appropriate. Throughout her long career, Hepburn experienced both wild success and dismal failure. Ultimately, it was unimportant which occurred. What mattered was that she stood up and tried, always.
After watching Star Trek: Voyager for seven years, I already knew that Kate Mulgrew was an exceptional actress, but this play truly showcased her considerable talent. She received an enthusiastic, heartfelt ovation for her performance, and it was richly deserved. Bravo, Kate!
A False Note: Okay, the amateur reviewer in me is now raising her hand. The play itself was not perfect. It was very good, but I do have one minor complaint. In both acts, there was a short, confusing montage of disjointed dialog (accompanied by what looked like strobe lighting) which was supposed to represent Hepburn's stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories. A least I think that's what they were supposed to represent. It was jarring both times. Mulgrew did what she could with them, and earned spontaneous applause for her efforts after the one in the second act, but they really didn't fit in with the rest of the play. Now, I'm not a professional critic, or even a regular theatre go-er, so this is just the humble opinion of your average monkee-on-the-street, but the play was humming along nicely without these montages, and it would lose absolutely nothing without them.
The two montages were the only false notes of the evening, though. For the most part, the play was an enlightening and entertaining look at the life of Katharine Hepburn, an American icon. And Mulgrew was brilliant. I heartily recommend this play to fans of both Kates. If you can get to Hartford to see it, GO! You won't regret it!
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