Theater: Divine Right

THE WEST SIDE WALTZ by Ernest Thompson

Katharine Hepburn is one of the few actresses in America who seem born to the blood royal. When she steps on a stage, she rules by divine right. The theater becomes a throne room, the playgoer a loyal subject. Her imperious gaze, manner and gestures command the bent knee and the silent gasp of awe.

She is overpowering even when her acting skills are not. She is a master strategist of expression. Her voice has a narrow range, yet her use of it encompasses dismissive contempt, romantic yearning, intellectual excitement, absolute shock, quivering pain, girlish ardor and the unbridled anger of Zeus.

It is lucky for Playwright Thompson, author of On Golden Pond, that Hepburn brings all her voices to his slight comedy, which is virtually tongue-tied as to passion and skimpily plotted. Hepburn plays Margaret Mary Elderdice, a widow of about 70, who is fiercely independent of mind but whose body is weakening. In the course of the play, physical declivity takes her from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair. Her lifeline is no longer in the palm of her hand.

Her apartment building is ailing as well. Once an elegant address on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, it is now suffering from the not-so-benign neglect of the landlord. Margaret Mary’s chief joy and solace is playing the piano, mostly Strauss and Chopin waltzes in tandem with a violin-playing “maiden lady” of about 50 named Cara Varnum (Dorothy Lou-don). Both actresses “fake” their instruments stylishly.

A good soul, sexually repressed but with a quirky sense of humor, Cara would like nothing better than to move in with Margaret Mary for mutual care and companionship. With aloof hauteur, the widow indicates, as only Hepburn could, that Cara is non-U. Selfish, highhanded, unfeeling, Margaret Mary takes in a different roommate. Robin Bird (Regina Baff), a woman of about 30, is a Brooklyn sparrow with a broken wing. She has been wounded by her husband, who divorced her to turn homosexual. Robin brings out the possessive mother-tyrant in the widow, but in return Margaret Mary goads her into staking a personal claim on life.

Naturally, all ends well for all. The entire cast is tiptop, though when Hepburn smiles, audience eyes are bound to be glued to the sun goddess. The unlikeliest sight of all is the closing scene on the stage of Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater, when Katharine Hepburn “fakes” humility.

—By T.E. Kalem