Tea at Five
Pasadena Playhouse
39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena
Through Oct. 2
Tuesday-Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.,
Sunday 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Tickets: $37-$42
(626) 356-PLAY

Kate Mulgrew ought to be the first to admit that she was born to play Katharine Hepburn. Even during her years as Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager the resemblance was apparent; today, the manner in which Mulgrew takes command of the stage demonstrates that she is confident in her ability not just to impersonate, but to inhabit the late, great Kate. Tea at Five is a fine biographical sketch of the iconic actress, and where Matthew Lombardo's script runs a bit thin, Mulgrew gamely hoists it on her back to carry it through the end.

The play has toured for several years under the direction of John Tillinger, and the team has honed it into a razor-sharp production that spans 50 years of Hepburn's life in just under two hours. It takes place in two acts, in 1938 and 1983, respectively, within Hepburn's estate on the Connecticut shore. When we first meet her, in the privacy of her living room, she poses and postures shamelessly, even flopping dramatically on her floral sofa with her hand pressed to her forehead. While entertaining to watch, this moment nearly succumbs to parody, until Mulgrew begins to address the audience directly. It's a rather jarring move, but then the play's intents become clear -- that we are being granted an intimate peek into an infamously private life. Purposefully striding about the stage, the vibrant redhead recounts major moments in her career, name dropping all along the way. She caustically addresses her reputation in the business as "box office poison," but when she loses out on the lead in Gone With the Wind, her desperation emerges. Lombardo's material never goes deeper than what we can read in books, but Mulgrew's performance brings out a vulnerability and candidness that can't be found on a page.

As the curtain rises on Act 2, Mulgrew pauses a beat before facing the audience. There is the inevitable gasp, for Mulgrew is transformed into a picture-perfect elder Hepburn. She knows it, the director knows it, we all know it -- it's a deliberate move, but entirely effective. Recovering from a car crash and in the throes of aging and Parkinson's disease, she still maintains her famous grace and confidence. This act differs from the first in that it reminisces about the more complex issues in Hepburn's past, including her relationship with her parents, her 27-year romance with Spencer Tracy, and the suicide of her brother. While a touch more personal than the first act, at times it comes across as manipulatively sentimental. Surely Hepburn would never sit around bemoaning her past in front of strangers' peering eyes. But technicalities aside, Mulgrew makes this an experience that few others could recreate, and Tea at Five has the unheard of advantage of appealing to both Trekkies and Hepburn fans, which are loyal audiences indeed. -- By Sarika Chawla

Dead End
Ahmanson Theatre
135 N. Grand Ave., L.A.
Through Oct. 16
Tuesday-Friday 8 p.m., Saturday 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.
Sunday 2 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $20-$75
213-628-2772
www.TaperAhmanson.com

Nobody can accuse Michael Ritchie of sneaking quietly into Gordon Davidson's old seat as artistic director of the Center Theatre Group. Dead End, the first production of Ritchie's tenure, features a cast of 42 actors, James Noone's magnificent four-story New York tenement set, and a 10,000-gallon pool in the orchestra pit standing in for Manhattan's East River. Sidney Kingsley's 1935 three-act drama about a gang of ragtag kids whose Manhattan neighborhood is being crowded out by new luxury housing is rarely revived because of its daunting size. Ritchie and company are to be commended for dusting off this slightly creaky piece of Depression-era social commentary and giving it a lavish and nuanced revival.

Director Nicholas Martin, who first directed the play when Ritchie ran the Williamstown Theatre Festival, uses Noone's incredibly detailed streetscape effectively, carefully choreographing the action to connect intimate, two-character scenes with the occasional burst of crowds and chaos. The curved cobblestone alleyway leading upstage provides ample opportunities for breathless entrances and dramatic, back-turned exits.

Jeremy Sisto is the biggest name in the cast, bringing a dim-witted but dangerous edge to Baby-Face Martin, the gangster on the lam who returns to the hood to visit his mother (a frightening Joyce Van Patten) and ex-gal-turned-hooker (a haunting Pamela Gray). A host of L.A. stage vets create memorable characters, and Kathryn Hahn is a standout as the big sister of one of the boys, desperate to make a better life.

But it's the Dead End Kids who win our hearts, from their cannon-balling into the orchestra pit as the curtain goes up, to their plaintive song of escaping the slums as the curtain comes down. Led by Phil of the Future's Ricky Ullman in an impressively rich and expressive performance, the young actors playing the local gang embrace the "Scram!"-flavored dialogue for all it's worth, and frolic and fight with equally convincing fervor. To quibble, the New York accents go astray at times, with repeated references to "reform school" sounding more Pawtucket than Manhattan. And with barely two hours of stage time, the evening doesn't need two intermissions. But in an era when theaters gravitate to three-character, 90-minute plays, Dead End -- with its epic scope and sheer ambition -- is a worthy endeavor deserving of applause. -- Christopher Cappiello