{"id":5118,"date":"2019-06-30T23:00:30","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T06:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=5118"},"modified":"2019-06-30T23:00:30","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T06:00:30","slug":"dunaway-has-tea-at-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2019\/06\/30\/dunaway-has-tea-at-five\/","title":{"rendered":"Dunaway Has Tea at Five"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd then it dawned on me \u2013 I\u2019ll go back to my roots. 
\nThe theatre.  Back to Broadway.  Big mistake.\u201d  <\/em><\/span>  
\n\u2013 <\/em>Faye Dunaway <\/strong>as Katharine Hepburn <\/strong>in the play Tea at Five<\/em><\/strong>. 
\nThis may be one of those art-imitating-life-imitating-art moments.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In years to come, when I contend that nothing exciting ever happens in June, please remind me about Faye Dunaway<\/strong>\u2019s appearance as Katharine Hepburn <\/strong>in Matthew Lombardo<\/strong>\u2019s Tea at Five<\/em><\/strong> at Boston\u2019s Huntington Theatre<\/em>.  To enumerate Miss Dunaway\u2019s theatrical talents is beyond the confines of this column.  Surely she has the goods \u2013 skills that were honed at Boston<\/em> University<\/em>, which utilizes the Huntington Theatre for its productions.  Alas, the necessary ingredients did not come together for an unforgettable evening of theatre.<\/p>\n

To be fair, opening night was after only a handful of previews, Faye is 78, and she hasn\u2019t been on stage since\u2026well, don\u2019t even go there.  On the positive side, she does get through the show \u2013 although one can hardly say that in an ad.  What is curiously absent is anything even slightly reminiscent of the Great Kate.  In her red wig, Dunaway physically evokes memories of a latter-day Mary Tyler Moore<\/strong>.  Her character may have a broken ankle, but Faye\u2019s Hepburn walks around with ease.  Where is she going?  To take sips out of strategically placed glasses of water.  After all, seniors need to stay hydrated.  There is not the slightest tremor \u2013 although the malady is referred to in the script.  Hepburn\u2019s inimitable tight Yankee diction is all but missing.  As to the words, they don\u2019t come to Faye easily \u2013 despite the aid of an earpiece (unless she is also guiding planes into Logan<\/em> Airport<\/em>).  Dunaway\u2019s acting style is more of a slow, intense burn rather than Kate\u2019s natural clip.  It\u2019s a strange confluence that simply doesn\u2019t gel.  As performed by La Dunaway, Lombardo\u2019s script seems less engaging here than ever before.  I suppose it could all come together during the course of the remaining two weeks in Boston.  But Broadway<\/em>?  I don\u2019t think so.  Frankly, I\u2019d advise all fans to swarm to Boston immediately.  At least that way you\u2019ll be able to say you saw it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAnd then it dawned on me \u2013 I\u2019ll go back to my roots.  The theatre.  Back to Broadway.  Big mistake.\u201d     \u2013 Faye Dunaway as Katharine Hepburn in the play Tea at Five.  This may be one of those art-imitating-life-imitating-art moments. In years to come, when I contend that nothing exciting ever happens in June, please remind me about Faye Dunaway\u2019s appearance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5127,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5118\/revisions\/5127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}