IN Los Angeles
September 2005

Kate Mulgrew ought to be the first to admit that she was born to play Katharine Hepburn. Even during her years as Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager the resemblance was apparent; today, the manner in which Mulgrew takes command of the stage demonstrates that she is confident in her ability not just to impersonate, but to inhabit the late, great Kate. Tea at Five is a fine biographical sketch of the iconic actress, and where Matthew Lombardo's script runs a bit thin, Mulgrew gamely hoists it on her back to carry it through the end.

The play has toured for several years under the direction of John Tillinger, and the team has honed it into a razor-sharp production that spans 50 years of Hepburn's life in just under two hours. It takes place in two acts, in 1938 and 1983, respectively, within Hepburn's estate on the Connecticut shore. When we first meet her, in the privacy of her living room, she poses and postures shamelessly, even flopping dramatically on her floral sofa with her hand pressed to her forehead. While entertaining to watch, this moment nearly succumbs to parody, until Mulgrew begins to address the audience directly. It's a rather jarring move, but then the play's intents become clear -- that we are being granted an intimate peek into an infamously private life. Purposefully striding about the stage, the vibrant redhead recounts major moments in her career, name dropping all along the way. She caustically addresses her reputation in the business as "box office poison," but when she loses out on the lead in Gone With the Wind, her desperation emerges. Lombardo's material never goes deeper than what we can read in books, but Mulgrew's performance brings out a vulnerability and candidness that can't be found on a page.

As the curtain rises on Act 2, Mulgrew pauses a beat before facing the audience. There is the inevitable gasp, for Mulgrew is transformed into a picture-perfect elder Hepburn. She knows it, the director knows it, we all know it -- it's a deliberate move, but entirely effective. Recovering from a car crash and in the throes of aging and Parkinson's disease, she still maintains her famous grace and confidence. This act differs from the first in that it reminisces about the more complex issues in Hepburn's past, including her relationship with her parents, her 27-year romance with Spencer Tracy, and the suicide of her brother. While a touch more personal than the first act, at times it comes across as manipulatively sentimental. Surely Hepburn would never sit around bemoaning her past in front of strangers' peering eyes. But technicalities aside, Mulgrew makes this an experience that few others could recreate, and Tea at Five has the unheard of advantage of appealing to both Trekkies and Hepburn fans, which are loyal audiences indeed.