Courtesy DKC/O&M
Faye Dunaway is coming back to Broadway. And shell be playing Katharine Hepburn.
In a brief and surprise announcement, producer Ben Feldman dropped the news that Dunaway, after an absence of more than 35 years from the Broadway stage, will play Hepburn in the Broadway premiere next summer of playwright Matthew Lombardos one-woman-play Tea at Five. The play, in a new version by Lombardo written for this production, will be directed by the Tony-nominated John Tillinger.
Tea at Five will play a strictly limited engagement in the summer of 2019. Additional information, including the complete creative team, dates, and theater will be announced early next year.
The announcement comes on the very day that director Ivo van Hoves Broadway production of Network is set to open. The 1976 film version won Dunaway an Oscar.
Dunaways last appearance on Broadway was in 1982s The Curse of an Aching Heart, a short-lived production that couldnt match the actress legendary star-making breakthrough in Arthur Millers 1964 After the Fall. In 1996, she won a Sarah Siddons Award for her performance as Maria Callas in the national touring company of Terrence McNallys Master Class.
One of Dunaways more famous roles of the 90s was the one she didnt play: After being cast to replace Glenn Close in the L.A. production of Andrew Lloyd Webbers Sunset Boulevard musical, Dunaway was blindsided when Lloyd Webber instead shut down the L.A. production and publicly blamed the actress singing abilities. Dunaway filed a lawsuit, and the matter was settled out of court.
Lombardos Tea at Five, first performed in 2002 by actress Kate Mulgrew, is a solo play based on Hepburns autobiography Me: Stories of My Life. Mulgrew played the role at major regional theaters and New Yorks Off Broadway Promenade Theatre. At the time, the two-act play was set in both 1938 and, in the second act, 1983. Lombardos revisions for the upcoming production were not detailed.
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