Tea at Five
Play written by Matthew Lombardo
Tea at Five is a 2002 one-woman play written by Matthew Lombardo, which presents the story of Katharine Hepburn through a monologue. It is based on Hepburn's book, Me: Stories of My Life. The initial production starred Kate Mulgrew, for whom the part was reportedly written.
Mulgrew has frequently been compared to Hepburn—a comparison she has described in interviews as "odious." Although she was not initially a fan of Hepburn, Mulgrew reportedly developed a deep appreciation for her while researching the role.
Plot
Tea at Five offers an intimate look at Katharine Hepburn in her home at the Fenwick estate in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
The first act takes place in September 1938. Despite her Broadway appearances and her first Oscar, Hepburn has just been labeled "box office poison" after a series of film flops. With her professional future in doubt, she reflects on her childhood in Hartford, her education, and her start in show business.
The second act takes place in February 1983, after Hepburn is injured in a car crash. The accident gives the now-legendary star an opportunity to reflect on the triumphs of her career and her heartbreaking romance with Spencer Tracy.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tea at Five” is play written by Matthew Lombardo. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Five, Play and written, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “play written by Matthew Lombardo” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2398285. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2002, 1938 and 1983.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Tea at Five” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.