In her one-woman play Tea at Five, about to open at Alta Arts in an On the Verge Theatre production, Annalee Jefferies plays the immortal Katharine Hepburn in both a younger and older version.
On the Verge Producing Artistic Director Ron Jones contacted Jefferies (whose extensive resume includes stints on Broadway and was a company member at the Alley Theatre for 20 years) about the 2002 play written by Matthew Lombardo based on Hepburn’s own book Me: Stories of My Life. Producing Artistic Director Bruce Lumpkin is directing.
Most people when they remember Hepburn think of her beauty even as she aged, but also her quavering voice and shaking hands (caused by an essential tremor condition. )
What they often don’t remember, Jefferies said, is her banter in her early movies, her rapid fire delivery. She starred in movies with Cary Grant and longtime love Spencer Tracy. She was Jo in Little Women — she won four Oscars out of 12 nominations — and captured everyone’s attention in films like The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen, The Lion in Winter and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.
But there were the proverbial bumps in the road. After first attaining significant success in movies including her first Oscar, Hepburn had a series of flops and was labeled box office poison. She returned to theater, had a hit with The Philadelphia Story and brought it back to the movies with the stipulation that she would star in it. “She herself says how we fail. How we have to get back up on the horse and do it again and do it again and do it again. Reinvent ourselves,” Jefferies said.
Asked how she felt about playing such an iconic role, Jefferies said without hesitation: “I’m terrified. It’s a play about Katharine Hepburn and her life.”
At the same time, she said, “I’m having a blast doing it. I’m so excited to be bringing something back to my Houston audiences. I’m thrilled to bring this forward to see if anybody would still come out.”
Growing up, Jefferies, a self described “ranch kid” (she still lives on one today in Brenham where she manages a wildlife property), was left to her own imagination and started playing dress-up. “High heels in the dust,” she said. The family moved to Australia for a while and that was where her mother suggested she take acting lessons. Eventually she went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London before returning to the states in Washing SD.C. and New York and then the Alley where in her off time she worked around the world.
When she was 19 she wanted to be like Hepburn, she said. ” I thought everything that she said is exactly the way I felt about my life in the theater. She had enormous discipline and I wanted that same discipline. I thought she was great.”
Her admiration for Hepburn started to bleed over into Jefferies’ work life. She put herself through the University of Houston by doing voiceovers and radio commercials., she said. “I would use that voice and they said ‘Let’s get the girl who does Katharine Hepburn.'”
Eventually, wanting to have her own voice, Jefferies decided to cut her imitation of Hepburn from her repertoire. Coming back to Houston to play Hepburn ” kind of feels like full circle in a way,” she said.
In the two-act play running about 90 minutes, Jefferies directly speaks to the audience. “It’ going to be kind of like they’re in my living room.”
Hepburn was known as a non-conformist, who somehow managed to avoid the strictures of the day about how a young actress should behave. Jefferies points out that Hepburn’s upbringing had a lot to do with the adult actress.
“Her mother was the president of the women’s suffragette association. She was a huge feminist So all those kind of women were in the house when Katharine Hepburn was growing up. And her father was a doctor. So they were up in society stirring the pot.
“So her mother put that into her and yet [Hepburn] didn’t really march for us but what she did was wear pants and she wore a white cuffed shirt with the sleeves rolled up and nobody was doing that. Now we all do that. She helped us evolve in clothing comfort.”
Performances are scheduled for December 8-23 (December 7 preview) at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 4 p.m. December 9, 3 p.m. December 10 and 17, 2 p.m. December 16 and 23 at Alta Arts, 5412 Ashbrook. For more information, call 713-673-9565 or visit onthevergetheatre.org. $40.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
