• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Donate

The Arts Fuse

Boston's Online Arts Magazine: Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater, and more

  • Coming Attractions
  • Reviews
  • Interviews
  • Commentary
  • The Arts
    • Performing Arts
      • Dance
      • Music
      • Theater
    • Other
      • Books
      • Film
      • Food
      • Television
      • Visual Arts
You are here: Home / Theater / Theater Review: “Tea at Five” Doesn’t Deserve Faye Dunaway

Theater Review: “Tea at Five” Doesn’t Deserve Faye Dunaway

July 2, 2019 7 Comments

By Christopher Caggiano

Faye Dunaway has chosen Tea at Five as the vehicle to bring her back to Broadway after a 37-year absence. Would that she had waited a bit longer for a vehicle more worthy of her considerable talents.

Faye Dunaway at Katherine Hepburn in “Tea at Five.” Photo: Nile Scott Studios.

Tea at Five by Matthew Lombardo. Directed by John Tillinger. At the Avenue of the Arts / Huntington Avenue Theatre, Boston, MA, through July 14.

The posters for Tea at Five feature two names above the title: Dunaway and Hepburn, as if that’s all you need to know about the production before you buy your tickets. Well, here’s something else you might want to know: it isn’t very good.

Tea at Five is a thankfully short (70 minutes) one-act, one-woman play that features Academy Award winner Faye Dunaway portraying Katharine Hepburn relatively late in Hepburn’s life. The play has been kicking around since 2002 when Kate Mulgrew appeared in an Off-Broadway production. The script has subsequently played a variety of locations, featuring a range of performers, including Tovah Feldshuh, Stephanie Zimbalist, and Charles Busch.

And now Faye Dunaway has chosen Tea at Five as the vehicle to bring her back to Broadway after a 37-year absence. Would that she had waited a bit longer for a vehicle more worthy of her considerable talents.

Thankfully, Dunaway does not attempt an impersonation of Hepburn so much as an embodiment. She captures Hepburn’s On Golden Pond-era doddering gait and her always-regal countenance. However, Dunaway wisely avoids adopting Hepburn’s Locust Valley lockjaw accent as well as her oft-impersonated tremoring (which has frequently been misidentified as Parkinson’s disease, and was in fact a condition called an “essential tremor”).

But if Dunaway has the physical countenance down, she hasn’t quite mastered all of her lines. Despite this performance being the official press opening, Dunaway was noticeably — shall we say, hesitant? — with her many of her lines. There were numerous obvious flubs in nearly every sequence in the play, including Hepburn’s famed “calla lily” speech (of which you could hear numerous letter-perfect renditions in just about any gay bar across this great land).

Dunaway does manage to remind us why, despite her relative absence from the stage and the screen in the last 30 years, she remains a Hollywood legend. She has a palpable emotional intensity, and gives you the sense that entire scenes are playing out behind her eyes as part of her backstory. She’s a legend for a reason.

Unfortunately, Matthew Lombardo’s script doesn’t give her the support to bring dramatic moments fully to life. Lombardo seems to specialize in vanity productions for actresses of a certain age. His two Broadway outings thus far have been Looped (2010), which featured Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead, and High (2011), starring Kathleen Turner as an acerbic nun. Looped ran a little under a month, and High ran for less than a week.

In Tea at Five, Lombardo paints with the broadest of strokes, with little nuance or complexity. He merely presents us with an overview of Hepburn’s career, without much of a meaningful through line. In another one-character play, Tru (1989), author Jay Presson Allen anchors her portrayal of Truman Capote in a specific temporal context: Capote’s society friends have just abandoned him when they discover he’s writing a book that exposes their secrets. There’s no similar “Why now?” justification in Tea at Five.

Instead, Lombardo gives us banal lessons on the vagaries of fame. “Critical acclaim doesn’t always translate into dollar signs,” Hepburn tells us. Or, “If you’re good to your work, your work will be good to you.” His attempts at humor are likewise ham-fisted, with punchlines worthy of the Borscht Belt. “I checked into the Waldorf,” Hepburn says at one point. “I should have checked into Bellevue,” referring of course to the well-known psychiatric facility. Lombardo even breaks out the tired trope of saying someone “shall remain nameless” followed by the immediate mention of that person’s name

What’s worse, Lombardo doesn’t seem to know how to raise the theatrical stakes in his play. He simply includes a series of emotional events as if that were the same as creating credible drama. He makes an especially risible attempt at creating an epiphany for Hepburn by drawing a connection between the suicide of her brother and the death of Spencer Tracy. Upon discovering Spencer Tracy dead in their kitchen, Hepburn cries out, “Spence! Tom! Tom! Spence!” It’s never really clear what the parallel is meant to be, other than she discovered both of them dead. (Perhaps this is a failed attempt at evoking Dunaway’s famous “She’s my sister! She’s my daughter!” scene from Chinatown? Whatever, it’s more ridiculous than dramatically compelling.)

Tea at Five is certainly valuable as a chance to see Faye Dunaway in person. Memorization mishaps notwithstanding, this could shape up to be a fine performance, and will likely get even better. After 17 years of development, it seems unlikely that the same will prove true of the play.


Christopher Caggiano is a writer and teacher based in Boston. He serves as Associate Professor of Theater at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. His writing has appeared in American Theatre and Dramatics magazines, and on TheaterMania.com and ZEALnyc.com.

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

By: Christopher Caggiano Filed Under: Featured, Review, Theater Tagged: Christopher Caggiano, Faye Dunaway, Katherine Hepburn, Tea at Five

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. John Flynn says

    July 9, 2019 at 10:27 am

    Beautiful Review.

    Reply
    • Chris Caggiano says

      July 9, 2019 at 11:00 am

      Thanks very much –cc

      Reply
      • Alan Levitan says

        July 9, 2019 at 4:04 pm

        Right on! I saw the opening night performance and was struck by the dramatic meaninglessness in this witless series of cliches. I was also surprised that Dunaway was miked in a theater this size; unnecessary, surely? This was a wasted hour. By the way, the 2003 production was in two acts, and much longer. I wouldn’t have been able to bear that.

        Reply
        • Chris Caggiano says

          July 12, 2019 at 6:33 pm

          Yeah, I thought of including those data in the review. I decided to focus on this production. I’m told act one took place in the 1930s and act two was set in the 1980s, which is when the play is currently set. Based on what’s in the current script, I can’t imagine the play was any better in its uncut state.

          Reply
  2. Linda says

    July 20, 2019 at 10:45 pm

    I have to agree with your review. I thought Ms. Dunaway did an excellent job at capturing Ms. Hepburn’s mannerisms and air. She did seem to flub a few lines but the audience was forgiving. I found the dark tone of the play daunting. Surely, there were areas of her life worth highlighting other than the deaths of Tom and Spence. This play almost painted her as a weak victim of Spencer Tracy. I never got that from her biography or other documentaries. I was hoping the play would be a celebration of two great actresses but I was sorely disappointed. I don’t think it will have much of a run on broadway, mores the pity. Hopefully Ms. Dunaway will find another play worthy of her talents and esteem. This depressing play isn’t it. As to Ms. Hepburn. I’ll have a film fest at home and enjoy a cup of tea with her and my memories.

    Reply
    • Chris Caggiano says

      July 22, 2019 at 5:44 pm

      I didn’t so much mind the dark subject matter as the superficial treatment. The playwright reduced the Great Kate to a series of plot developments and banal cliches. Kate deserves better. Faye deserves better.

      Reply
  3. Bill Marx says

    July 28, 2019 at 9:07 am

    Revealing omission in Dan Aucoin’s Boston Globe piece on Faye Dunaway’s meltdown in Tea at Five. Dunaway was the guest of honor at this year’s Elliot Norton Awards Ceremony, given by the Boston Theater Critics Association, of which Aucoin is a member. The actress’s name was used to sell tickets to the shindig — no mention of that. Now Aucoin joins the chorus (with little new to say) about her behavior and the show’s New York cancellation.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search

Popular Posts

  • Music Feature: The Tedeschi Trucks Band -- Home for the Holidays The Tedeschi Trucks Band is capping another remarkable... posted on December 1, 2019
  • Concert Review: "The Last Waltz 40 Tour" -- The Best Approximation Possible To hear a 13-piece ensemble of this caliber, doing just... posted on November 12, 2019
  • Concert Review: Tool -- Defying Convention Tool is going to remain relevant as long as the band ca... posted on November 15, 2019
  • Rock Concert Review: Bob Dylan at the Tsongas Center -- Nothing if Not Chameleonic But really, what is a Bob Dylan concert these days if n... posted on November 21, 2019
  • Theater Review: "Come From Away" -- A Heartening Tale of Human Connection Come From Away is more than just a rousing and heart-wa... posted on November 11, 2019

Social

Follow us:

Follow the Conversation

  • Ellie Street December 7, 2019 at 4:00 pm on Rock Concert Review: The Australian Pink Floyd Show — A Very Worthy TributeWhat a load of rubbish!! Save your money! I’ve heard better bands in village pubs! Left as soon as we...
  • Dick Horwich December 6, 2019 at 11:02 pm on Film Review: “Marriage Story” — A Divorce From HellFinished watching this movie an hour ago, and — though we didn’t find its sympathies as unbalanced as you did...
  • Ollie Hallowell December 5, 2019 at 5:51 pm on Critical Commentary: A Few Thoughts about John SimonA critic critiques a critic, so eloquently. Such a pleasure to read such informed and intelligent commentary.
  • William Marx December 5, 2019 at 3:07 pm on Opera Review: Antonio Salieri’s “Tarare” — A Startling Opera of Social CommentarySo Salieri shouldn't have been so jealous of Mozart ...
  • Bill Marx November 29, 2019 at 9:21 am on Book Feature: Terry Tempest Williams on the Agonies of “Erosion”I have been reading through this fine collection. Besides the essay that Bob suggests, I would recommend the Q &...

Donate

Like what you see? Donate to The Arts Fuse today!

Footer

  • About Us
  • Advertising/Underwriting
  • Syndication
  • Media Resources
  • Editors and Contributors

We Are

Boston’s online arts magazine since 2007. Powered by 70+ experts and writers.

Follow Us

Monthly Archives

Categories

"Use the point of your pen, not the feather." - Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2019 · The Arts Fuse - All Rights Reserved · Website by Stephanie Franz