Tea At Five Reviews

 

Connecticut Yankee Comes Through Loud and Clear

Stephanie Zimbalist delivers a tour-de-force performance as Katharine Hepburn in "Tea at Five."

Rohan Preston, Star Tribune

Katharine Hepburn's haughty and rebellious spirit has taken up residence at St. Paul's Ordway Center.

 Over the weekend, nimble vocal and physical chameleon Stephanie Zimbalist began channeling Hepburn in Matthew Lombardo's "Tea at Five."

A performer of protean range and wonderful timing, Zimbalist delivers a tour-de-force turn of a script that is lit with humor but has some small dramaturgical problems. The show, set in the Hepburn family home in Connecticut, unfolds under John Tillinger's loving direction.

Liberated, pants-wearing East Coast Brahmin and multiple Oscar-winning star of such films as "The Philadelphia Story,"The African Queen" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," Hepburn was a Hollywood original.

A figure cut from the cloth of Eleanor Roosevelt -- admittedly a much better-looking figure -- Hepburn led a life full of celebrity and color. Lombardo telescopes it by setting his two-act memory play in two periods of contemplation and reflection: in 1938, right on the heels of a series of movie flops in which studio executives dubbed her "box-office poison"; and in 1983, when she is frail and wearing a cast because of a car accident that could have killed her.

Lombardo's script offers some intimate portraits of her adventures and tragedies, including the death-by-hanging of her 14-year-old brother, Tom. Kate, a year younger than Tom, cut down his body with a pair of pinking shears. She would trim her hair and dress like him in tribute.

But this is a largely sanitized Hepburn, a Hepburn of strength and suggestion rather than the can-do ruggedness and moral complexity. Her decades-long affair with co-star Spencer Tracy gets small shrift, for example. Not included: lingering rumors about Hepburn's romances with women.

Even if the show is not as colorful as it could be, you still get a sense of Hepburn's passion, haughtiness and incorrigibility from Zimbalist, perhaps best known for starring in "Remington Steele" in the 1980s. She does a marvelous version of Hepburn's distinctive accent, which sounds like the words are being rolled at the back of the throat before being gently hacked out.

Through her artful portrayal, including the shakes that beset Hepburn at the end of her life, Zimbalist signals Hepburn's regality and wit. We are reminded that although a very public figure, Hepburn was a character who was warm and brittle beneath her tough veneer.

Minneapolis Scene
by Steven LaVigne
October 2006

There was good news and bad news as the Twin Cities theatre community headed toward an extremely chilly fall season. The Ordway Center hosted Matthew Lombardo’s play, “Tea at Five,” and the good news is that Stephanie Zimbalist is outstanding as Katharine Hepburn. Zimbalist captured the great star’s laugh and her spirit, although during the first act, a little make-up would have helped highlight her sunken cheekbones, and a girdle might have enhanced her body a bit more.

The first act is set in the Hepburn family Connecticut home in 1938. Having been labeled box office poison because of six failures in a row, Kate discusses her family and career in Hollywood as a storm rages outside, fielding calls from both her ex-husband, Ludlow Smith and her agent, Leland Hayward, who informs her that David O. Selznick has chosen Vivien Leigh over Hepburn for the coveted role of Scarlett O’Hara. The act ends with the storm raging, which will destroy the house, and the arrival of the script for The Philadelphia Story.

In act 2, set in 1983, Hepburn has had a car accident, and her companion, Phyllis Wilbourn is in hospital. Warren Beatty keeps sending flowers as a means of charming her into appearing in his remake of “Love Affair.” She addresses, far too briefly, the people who are gone, including Spencer Tracy. Especially delightful is her opinion of Stephen Sondheim, her neighbor, who kept Hepburn awake while creating the score for “Company.” After discussing her appearance on Broadway in “Coco,” and hopes of retirement, the show ends with her accepting Beatty’s offer.

The show, directed by John Tillinger, moves smoothly and quickly, although the bad news is that Lombardo’s script never progresses beyond surface level. Lifted largely from Hepburn’s autobiography, not much of the private woman is revealed that we didn’t already know. Furthermore, Tony Straiges’ set features artifacts, including African Masks, yet neither the filming of The African Queen, nor Hepburn’s book about it, are mentioned.

Garson Kanin’s biography of Tracy and Hepburn describes the star having a feud with the author, forcing him and his wife, Ruth Gordon, to sell their house to Sondheim, yet there is no mention of the feud, or its aftermath. Let’s just settle on the good news, Stephanie Zimbalist’s performance makes “Tea at Five” a marvelous theatre-going experience.

Portrait of Katharine Hepburn, unvarnished, fascinating  

BY RENEE VALOIS
Special To Pioneer Press

Early in Katharine Hepburn's career, when her acting coach asked her if she wanted to be a star or an actress, Hepburn replied, "A star!" This may come as no surprise to detractors who complain that Hepburn refused to disappear into her characters because she wanted audiences to remember that they were watching Katharine Hepburn - the great star.

On the other hand, it's hard to deny that Hepburn was a superior actress - especially since no woman has been nominated for more best actress Academy Awards (12) or won more (4), over the course of nearly 50 years in a career that didn't ebb until she was in her 70s and facing health problems.

"Tea at Five" at the Ordway offers fascinating insights into the events and people who shaped Hepburn, with fellow Connecticut native Stephanie Zimbalist starring in the one-woman show. (An interesting side note: Zimbalist's father dated Hepburn's sister.)

The show is entirely set in Hepburn's childhood home, the family estate in Fenwick, Conn. - her little "paradise" where she frequently visited and often lived.

The first half takes place in 1938 when Hepburn had just been labeled "box office poison" after a series of film flops (despite the fact that she had won her first Oscar for best actress just a few years earlier). She is desperately hoping to land the role of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," and makes the audience her confidante as she serves tea - a required tradition in the stuffy Hepburn household.

Zimbalist doesn't look a lot like the young Hepburn, but she manages to convey some of her famous accent and artificial, rolling laugh. Her repeated poses on the divan suggest Hepburn's poseur side as she projects the ego and irascibility that infuriated some. Hepburn's responses to phone calls in the play are often surprisingly rude, filled with bluntness and self-absorption. There is also plenty of humor in her nasty little quips and self-deprecating assessments.

The first half doesn't paint a particularly pretty portrait of the actress, although it's probably a more accurate image than Hepburn created in her autobiography, modestly titled "Me."

Things become far more involving in the second half, when Hepburn starts to reveal the skeletons in her uppercrust family's extensive closets. We discover some of the terrible events that molded her: the tragic death of her beloved brother when she was 14, her physician father's refusal to allow her mother to have a career, the repression and silence demanded in the household because her father believed the family's image was more important than emotional honesty.

Zimbalist also melts more believably into the role of the elderly Hepburn in Act II, which takes place in 1983, shortly after the actress was injured in a car accident and just a couple years after she won her final Oscar for "On Golden Pond."

Matthew Lombardo's script delves into the complexities that made Hepburn inscrutable to many, and succeeds in making her sympathetic despite some less-than-admirable actions. Director John Tillinger helps Zimbalist fill up the stage with Hepburn's strong personality--and the restlessness that ultimately drove her to the top.

"Tea at Five" is a fascinating character study of an actress who was every bit as colorful as the characters she portrayed.