"Tea" with formidable Hepburn

She was a great beauty. Or was she freckled, skinny, ungainly?

She prized her independence and freedom. Yet she fell madly in love with, and clung to, a man she became devoted to.

She spoke her mind with bracing candor. Yet she fudged the truth when it suited her.

Will the real Katharine Hepburn please stand up?

Hepburn, the star of "The African Queen" and "The Philadelphia Story," among many film classics, was a far more complex personality than we knew. Or so says Matthew Lombardo, author of the Hepburn bio-play "Tea at Five." And actress Kate Mulgrew, who stars in the one-woman, Off-Broadway show, opening at Seattle Repertory Theatre, concurs.

Mulgrew, you'll recall, was a lead Seattle Rep actress in the 1980s before starring on TV's "Mrs. Columbo" and "Star Trek: Voyager." Her sculpted cheekbones and smoky voice give her a startling resemblance to Hepburn, whom she describes as "a maverick personality, so unique."

But Lombardo, who wrote "Tea at Five" for Mulgrew, says the two agreed "this play would not be a puff piece. There was a lot to Hepburn — she could be very gracious, and very demanding, Kate the Great and, as she was once called, Katharine of Arrogance.

"She was a tough woman, because she had to be. And we wanted to get all her colors into the portrait we were painting."

As Mulgrew, Lombardo and director John Tillinger researched Hepburn's life, they were struck by her Yankee grit and emotional fragility.

"Just under that flint was a skein of vulnerability that knew no bounds," Mulgrew suggests. "I discovered — underneath all that Yankee stuff — there was this young girl, pleading with life."

"Tea at Five" was slated at the Rep last fall, but rescheduled due to the sudden illness of Mulgrew's (now-recovered) politician husband, Tim Hagan.

The play looks in on Hepburn at two pivotal points in her long life, first in 1938, at age 31, when she was one of many female stars vying to play Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind." In Kate's case, she thought it might help her escape the curse of being labeled "box-office poison" in Hollywood.

Act 2 unfolds 45 years later, as Hepburn recovers from an accident and mulls over her past.

Certainly, Lombardo found no shortage of research material on Hepburn, or speculation on such matters as her long love affair with Spencer Tracy (a Catholic who would never divorce his wife to marry her), the dim and bright patches of her stardom, and her crusty, outspoken views on life, love, politics and art.

There are dozens of books about her, from "Kate Remembered" by A. Scott Berg (published 13 days after Hepburn's death, in 2003), to "Katharine Hepburn: Star as Feminist," a more academic analysis by Andrew Britton.

"Me: Stories of My Life," Hepburn's 1991 memoir, spent 24 weeks on the hardcover best-seller list. But Lombardo says the star's own recollections aren't always reliable. For instance, she wrote erroneously of having appeared on Broadway in Philip Barry's "Holiday." (She did star in the screen version of the play.)

"In her book, she told you what she wanted you to know," says Lombardo. "It was that 'Katharine the Great' image. And while it's a wonderful read, I don't know how much is true."

Mulgrew gleaned more insight from the controversial Barbara Leaming biography of the four-time Oscar winner. It detailed a tragic incident Hepburn rarely spoke of: the suicide of a brother.

"She found her 15-year-old brother after he hanged himself and never recovered from that. The experience defined her."

Mulgrew also believes Hepburn was drawn to the alcoholic Tracy, and other "difficult" men, in part because of her "tough guy" father, a respected but aloof physician from whom she "was always trying to win love and attention."

Mulgrew could relate. " I, too, am from a large family, one of eight. I, too, am the oldest daughter. My father was a tough dad; my mom was supportive. I grew up in the same kind of Yankee household, full of unconventional ideas, and I, too, wanted a life in the theater."

Where they part company, Mulgrew notes, "is that I made decisions to marry and have children. Hepburn was very frank about her own choices. She said, 'I can't have it all and won't pretend to.' "

Does Mulgrew agree with that sentiment? "I think she was right, for herself. A driven star of her magnitude? It's hard enough to be a reasonably good mother and keep any career running."

Mulgrew won some raves in the extended Off-Broadway run of "Tea at Five." But earlier, when the show debuted at Hartford Stage in Hartford, Conn. (where Hepburn was born, raised and buried), it was publicly attacked by niece Katharine Houghton, who starred with her aunt in the film "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."

"She came to see it and called the play trash," recalls the still-smarting Lombardo. "As a preface to that, she's been working on her own play about Hepburn, which she wants to write, produce, star in, what have you."

Though Lombardo admits to taking a little artistic license in "Tea at Five," he contends the bulk of his research was "right on. Kate and John made me check every single thing out thoroughly. So everything in the play is true — or something Hepburn said because she believed it was true!"

To stay objective, the writer didn't try to contact or interview Hepburn. And in the 1970s, Mulgrew missed her only chance to meet the woman she now plays.

"There was a moment when I was going to audition for the tour of a play Hepburn appeared in, 'A Matter of Gravity,' " she remembers. "But I backed out."

Now Mulgrew has Hepburn to thank for getting her back to stage acting — a pursuit both have felt passionate about.

"I so look forward to challenging myself in the theater," she says. "I've moved to New York to do that. It's hard when you have a big TV success — everyone puts you in that box. But right now, the theater is where I belong."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com