Tea at Five is the one-woman show about the life of Katharine Hepburn. Starring as the tomboy icon and beauty who led an unapologetic and independent life is four-time Tony award nominee Tovah Feldshuh. Feldshuh recently spoke with Windy City Queercast's Amy Matheny about playing the legendary actress.
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Pictured: Tovah Feldshuh.
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Amy Matheny: On what particular time in Hepburn's life does the play focus?
Tovah Feldshuh: Tea at Five spans her life. It begins with her at 76 years old, but goes back to her at 31 years old right on the stage without an act break. I've got two quick changes. It goes from 76 to 31 to 76.
AM: What has been the biggest surprise that you've discovered about her?
TF: One of the biggest surprises is that she makes me cry because she is the prototype of American nobility. It's how we want to talk, it's the thin waist we want to have, it's the breeding and the grace that she has in her from her beginnings. And it's her tremendous relationship, [even] with all this breeding, with the earth … with gardening, with having dirty fingernails, with the manliness inside her woman's heart. She's a very at-home girl/boy or boy/girl. She's very at home being a tomboy. She was inseparable from her older brother Tom, who would commit suicide at a very tender age of 15 when she was 13. She left her birthday at that time, which was in May, and she took on Tom's birthday of Nov. 8. She wore his clothes. She cut her hair, and she tried to be both son and daughter to her bereft, stoic, elegant, brilliant parents. She makes me cry.
She's a very brave woman, and she reallyin many respectsnever disappoints. When you get down to her real human values and her actions for other people, they really are, without question, noble. Her behavior around Spencer Tracy was unbelievable. It was 27 years of devotion, and as Louise Tracy, Spencer's wife whom he never divorced because he was a Catholic, said to her, 'I was his wife. You were just a rumor.' Hepburn never attended the funeral so as not to embarrass Louise Tracy, and when she spoke on television after Louise's death, she said, 'Mrs. Tracy really needed to be Mrs. Tracy in order to do all of her good work. I didn't need the moniker of Mrs. Spencer Tracy. I would never take it from her.'
AM: You played Yentl on Broadway before Streisand played Yentl.
TF: It was a lot of fun. I've made some wonderful career choices in playing trouser parts, and that was one of the biggest breaks of my career. It was the first one that put me on a marquee. It was about a little girl who sacrificed her feminine identity to become a scholar, [which was] utterly forbidden to womankind. So she had to parade around as a boy. And there's a saying in the Talmut that, 'if you don the clothes of the other sex, does the soul become perplexed?' And those were all the big questions that would be asked of me. It was my first break with the gay community. I don't think there's a decent career built in the United States without the support of the gay community, [which is] a very, very important element in the artistry of the United States. Or of any great democracy, really.
AM: There's been much talk about whether or not Hepburn slept with women. Was she bisexual?
TF: My gut says she did not sleep with women, per se. On the other hand, she had a very close alliance and a love for Laura Harding. Whether they made love or not, I don't know. Whether they slept in the same bed, I don't think Hepburn would have made a second thought. I don't know what her sexual practices were, but I do know she had wonderful, close and abiding feelings for Laura Harding that lasted the rest of their lives. They were, in many respects, inseparable. She said, 'Oh, they thought we were lesbians. It didn't make our beaus very happy.' I don't know. Did she ever kiss a girl? I don't know. I know I did for 10 months in public on Broadway, in front of a thousand people a night, in Yentl.
AM: Well, I hope she did at least once.
TF: If she had the impulse, I don't think that she would have stopped herself. I'm going to play Tallulah Bankhead as well in 2008, and she was definitely a practicing bisexual. She had women lovers. Now that woman was wild and, in many respects, debauched. [But] that doesn't have anything to do with her sexuality. It has to do with her use of drugs and alcohol. But Hepburn was highly disciplined, a cold shower-in-the-morning girl. You know, she took freezing baths and she swam almost every day of her life, rain or shine, freezing water or not. It didn't bother her a bit.
AM: You also starred in Golda's Balcony (about the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir), which set a record as the longest-running one-woman play in Broadway history.
TF: And you know what the surprise is about her is? She was a practicing heterosexual but she had five lovers. So how about them apples? She wasn't a beautiful woman, but she attracted men all the time. Far out, huh?
AM: What is the challenge in playing real, [as opposed to] fictional, women?
TF: Whomever you play, fictional or not, youhave to advocate for them. [Even] if you were writing a one-person play about Hitler, we wouldn't make him bad. We'd make him the best cleaning woman on the planet Earth. He's just a great scourer and cleaner, except he got rid of homosexuals, Jews, communists, anybody who wasn't like him. But you have to advocate for the character. You're in their bones, in their skin. They're talking about themselves.
AM: You have this enormous gift for being transparent on filmvery difficult to do and, yet, you make it look easy. In Kissing Jessica Stein, you radiated such truth in that scene when telling your daughter to just let go and fall for the girl. What kind of a response did you get from that movie?
TF: That was a big response. I think my favorite call ever was from Barbra Streisand herself, saying she had just seen the film and ... loved my work, and she needed to call and tell me. How did she even get my phone number? Even though she's Barbra Streisand, I said I thought that was an incredible thing to take time out of your day, and call a practical stranger. I mean we were connected through Yentl, but we were nothing more than acquaintances, and to call and tell somebody you believe in them? How kind-hearted that was!
AM: It's such an extraordinary performance I'm amazed that everybody who knew you didn't call.
TF: Well, I loved doing that movie. I loved the writers, both girls. I gained a lot of friends in the gay community [with that film], particularly the gay women's community. Which brings me to Rosie O'Donnell … with whom I had the pleasure of sharing Chita Rivera's act last night. We were both watching brilliant, extraordinary, very well-preserved and utterly capable Chita Rivera. And I have a real soft spot in my heart for Rosie. Rosie was there completely unadorned with Kelly and talking about getting chubby. It was so so funny, so cute. I'm opening June 7 in London and Rosie is coming to opening night. What a doll she is! She was talking to me about the women's movement, and it made me think of all the wonderful lucky roles that I've been able to play.
Tea at Five is playing at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts Dec. 19-23 only. For tickets, call 847-673-6300 or see www.northshorecenter.org . To listen to this entire interview, visit www.Windycityqueercast.com .