Theater Review—

‘Tea At Five’ Is Terrific

By Julie Stern

For the next two weeks, audiences at Newtown’s Little Theatre will have the chance to see a reprise of Noel Desiato doing her impersonation of Katherine Hepburn in Matthew Lombardo’s one woman play, Tea at Five. If you didn’t get to see her do this on the boards up in New Milford, Sherman or Brookfield, you should by all means take advantage of this opportunity.

The play is by turns enthralling and moving, and Desiato is terrific.

The play is set in the living room of Fenwick, Hepburn’s family home in Old Saybrook, shortly before 5 pm, the time when the family invariably sat down for tea and conversation. Here the audience is treated as an invited guest, whom Hepburn will entertain with a running commentary.

Lombardo’s conceit is to have the first act take place in 1938. The flamboyant redhead we see is brash, proud and combative, ready for all comers. Pursued by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, engaged in a vitriolic battle of insults with the tabloid columnist Luella Parsons, Kate is confidently awaiting the call from her agent announcing that she has gotten the lead role in a movie called Gone With the Wind. “After all, I am Scarlett O’Hara!”

Although the great hurricane of September 21 is looming, and too many of her most recent movies have been flops,  most things seem right with the world: her parents are wealthy and successful in their own right, her relationship with her ex-husband is amicable,  and her Bryn Mawr  education has equipped her with a social and  intellectual presence that was so striking in greatest hit The Philadelphia Story.

Even though the act ends with a phone call delivering the bad news about that upstart Vivien Leigh, she shrugs it off in manner of Scarlett having been dumped by Rhett.

Then, after a 15-minute intermission, we are brought back to a somewhat similar room, again, shortly before five, except that the playbill reminds us it is now 1983. Forty-five years have taken their toll on Hepburn.

The woman who turns painfully to face us after poking awkwardly at the fire is now gray-haired, trembling with the onset of Parkinson’s, her right leg hampered by a walking cast, the result of an accident where she lost control of her car and took out a telephone pole.

The tea set is there, slightly the worse for wear, as she explains that the hurricane of ’38 washed the entire house away, so that it had to be entirely rebuilt. Miraculously, her brother scrabbled in the mud where the house had been, and after three days of digging was able to unearth the entire set of silver.

The motif of the telephone is repeated as well, only this time the caller is Warren Beatty, begging Kate to reconsider, and accept a part in one more film. She’s been turning him down on a weekly basis, explaining that her career is now over. We see the dark side of Hepburn’s life in this act, as she recalls the death of her beloved brother, Tom. She was 13 when she found his body hanging in the attic.

Her famous romance with Spencer Tracy is reduced to a photo on the shelf, as she recalls his drunken tirades and selfish cruelties.

And yet with all this she remains a gallant, indomitable figure, asking neither sympathy nor pity. She is still the proud, sardonic Kate, and as the scene ends, with a final phone call from Beatty, it is a joy to see her change her mind, so that the final word of the play is an affirmation of life, of the spirit, and of the great actress deciding to go on, one more time.

(Performances continue Friday and Saturday evenings at 8, and Sunday afternoons at 2, until September 27, at The Little Theatre, Orchard Hill Road in Newtown. Call 270-9144 for details.

On Friday, September 25, Newtown Congregational Church will host a preshow party beginning at 7:30 pm. Tickets for this are $25 and include refreshments. Call Linda Manganaro [426-3496] or Marie Sturdevant [740-2733] or visit Drug Center, Booth Library or Newtown Congregational Church for tickets.)