There’s a moment at the end of the first act of Matthew Lombardo’s Tea at Five when the powerful magic of theater stops you dead.
Katharine Hepburn (the mighty Annalee Jefferies) gets the phone call from her agent that she’s been anxiously awaiting. It’s about getting the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, the most coveted assignment in Hollywood history up to 1938. She was born to play this part, she has told us earlier. She wants this part, she needs this part.
Scarlett will resurrect her sagging career, whose meteoric rise to stardom, accompanied by a Best Actress Oscar for Morning Glory, her third movie role (1932), has hit bottom after a series of flops. She’s been labeled “box office poison” by the Independent Theatre Owners Association in a damning article in The Hollywood Reporter, trade magazine to the studios. Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Garbo, Joan Crawford, and, hard to believe, character actor Edward Arnold have all been listed as actors “whose dramatic ability is unquestioned, but whose box office draw is nil.” It was a scathing attack on the studios and their stars who earned stellar salaries but didn’t deliver.
She doesn’t get the role. Hepburn is crushed. “Who?” she cries. “Why, she’s not a star. She’s not even American.” Dazed, she puts down the phone and sits on the telephone stool. That’s when the magic happens. It’s brief, only a flash frame, but legendary star wattage shines. Her upturned head is to the wall, and, in profile, that blazing “look” of a young radiant Hepburn is there for all to see. It’s a luminous Clarence Bull or George Hurrell portrait come to life, a still image without flaw, an icon of all perfection and star quality. It stops time.
But only for a second. Jefferies should have a special light on her for that moment. It’s almost transcendent. Almost.
Playing “young” is nigh-on impossible for a mature actor. Even today’s wizardly CGI can’t erase the years without looking artificial and rather creepy. Jefferies is spot-on with Hepburn’s patented mannerisms, her clipped tone, that Brahmin accent, that wondrous roar of a laugh, even her cheekbones, but we’re much too close-up at On the Verge Theatre to suspend that much disbelief, no matter how perfect the simulation. The bad wig doesn’t help. Those lush chestnut locks of hers shouldn’t be a straw boater, no matter how marceled.
Perhaps if she had something better to play than Lombardo’s zip-file take on this Hollywood legend, we’d fall into make-believe. We almost do in Act II, where Jefferies is now closer in age to Hepburn when she makes her 1983 appearance in trousers and turtleneck, with her gray hair pulled into a chignon, a red scarf pulled over her man’s shirt, and a slight tremor in her hands and face, you can hear the audience’s absolute stun of recognition. The resemblance is uncanny. I thought they’d applaud. I wanted to.
There hasn’t been much drama so far in Act I. We get a cursory romp through her childhood with her suffragette mom and doctor father; her Connecticut, “progressive” upbringing; a hint of what’s to come when she wistfully remembers her dead brother; an ex-husband is mentioned as is her former lover, agent Leland Hayward; her desire to please her unemotional father is strongly conveyed; her love of work and details of craft is a mantra; she tells of her Broadway years pre-Hollywood with that signature line, “The calla lilies are in bloom again;” and, of course, her reaction to that scalding ad is much on her mind. Nothing flows smoothly, even as Jefferies serves tea for some nearby audience members, as she regales us with her presence and memories. She gets a thought and is off and running. A few life lessons are interspersed like crochet samplers, but nothing resonates. What Lombardy tells us we’ve known for years. Modern Screen delved more deeply.
Act II is better focused as it centers around her beloved older gay brother Tom and his teen-age suicide, and her fairy-tale romance with screen icon Spencer Tracy. Their relationship lasted almost thirty years: she, independent; he, married. Tracy was a drunk, a mean drunk. “Tortured,” she explains. Yet she stayed with him until his death in 1967, and together they made nine pictures, most of them highly successful comedies of manners which are now considered classics of the genre. Why she stayed in this abusive partnership that bucked all norms is a mystery to her – and also to Lombardy. Everything is skin deep, although Jefferies breezes through the complex life with pro’s confidence, ably helped by director Bruce Lumpkin.
Young ones today probably couldn’t tell Hepburn from Lombard. Can they even recognize the movie studio RKO? Lombardy’s superficial take on this glamorous lady, who was indeed ahead of her times in some ways and a throwback to the starchy morality of Connecticut wasps in others, had a fascinating life to be sure. But Lombardy refuses to fill in the blanks. Jefferies paints in as much as she can, which is prodigious, but we’re still left with only an outline, a faded 8X10 glossy. Where’s that luminous studio portrait? Where’s that screen magic? Gone with the wind.
Performances continue through December 23 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 On the Verge 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.
