At the Rep, Kate as Kate: A legend gets cozy

You get two Kates for the price of one in "Tea at Five" — Kate Mulgrew and the late Kate Hepburn.

But they merge into a single charismatic being in Matthew Lombardo's workmanlike solo bio-play, thanks mainly to the flair and skill of Kate M. After years cruising outer space in TV's "Star Trek: Voyager" series, Mulgrew has renewed her stage career in this Off-Broadway and touring show. And at Seattle Repertory Theatre, where she shone in major roles in the 1980s, she's in fine fettle.

Directed by John Tillinger on a New England cottage set by Tony Straiges, Lombaro's predictable script is one of those date-with-a-legend affairs in which a famed personage finds the audience camped out in her parlor, and instantly takes us into her confidence.

It's an obvious theatrical conceit that can often be, well, irritatingly phony. Particularly when the legend so prized her privacy that a sign on her driveway read: "Please go away."

What overrides the play's standard celebrity-humanizing gambit is Mulgrew's spot-on portrayal of Hepburn at two junctures of her lengthy life.

In Act 1, Mulgrew cuts a dashing swath as Kate the offbeat beauty and imperious star in her early 30s, vying to play Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind" — and resurrect her career after being branded "box-office poison." (Ironically, one of the "flops" that won her that label was the screwball comedy classic, "Bringing Up Baby." )

Mulgrew's Kate strides and flops around the chintz-covered furniture in the Hepburn clan's Connecticut beach house with a long-legged swagger, tossing her auburn curls and telling off the high and lowly in that distinctive Yankee drawl — which can soften into a seductively girlish titter. This gal is "tough" because "she has to be," and that's the main point.

Act 2 brings on a transformed Mulgrew as Hepburn in her 80s, believably enfeebled but unbowed. Her frizzy gray hair in a topknot, her manner defiant, she's more of a legend than ever, scrappier, saltier, yet somewhat more likable than her youthful self.

Carping about lazy servants, mulling over her long union with Spencer Tracy, rehashing a painful childhood memory, this Hepburn also revels in her power over Warren Beatty, who's pursuing her for what will be her final film role, in the 1994 movie "Love Affair."

If you've kept up with the Hepburn mythologizing and demythologizing industry, you'll find a lot of colorful anecdotes and attitude here, almost nothing about her thoughts on acting, and few surprising personal "revelations." It's well known Kate was enmeshed with Tracy for 20-plus years, and he never divorced his wife to marry her. And Barbara Leaming's controversial biography (a primary source for the script) revealed years ago how Hepburn's youth was darkened by her father's aloofness and brother's suicide.

Oh well, celebrity curiosity is bigger than ever, and Hepburn is still a figure of fascination to many — as much for her tangy independence, as for her four Oscars, and radiant work in "The Philadelphia Story" et al. She's also back in the spotlight again, via Cate Blanchett's fine portrayal of her in the film, "The Aviator."

Actually, "The Aviator" offers a more telling study of the actress, by viewing her in relation to another odd-duck Hollywood legend, Howard Hughes.

Yet even without other characters to bounce off, Mulgrew manages to evoke some of the Hepburn insecurities and quirks the movie suggests. Still, one comes away from "Tea at Five" wanting to meet Mulgrew again over a more substantial theatrical repast. This Kate deserves some big, meaty parts in big, juicy dramas — just as that other Kate did.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com