Latest news with #IvorytonPlayhouse
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
8 Things To Do This Weekend: Beyond Van Gogh and Monet, Robin Hood's Medieval Faire & Revolutionary War Encampment
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Looking for fun activities this Memorial Day Weekend? We have eight ideas for you! Step into the worlds of two legendary artists at the Connecticut Convention Center during Beyond Van Gogh and Beyond Monet through June 29th. Through June 8th at the Ivoryton Playhouse, see Tea at Five, a solo show about the fascinating life of local legend and screen icon Katharine Hepburn. 8 Things To Do This Weekend: Paw Patrol, Food Truck Battles & Family Farm Day See Maltby & Shire's About Time at the Terris Theatre through June 15th. It's a new musical revue about life, love and laughter in your third act. Memorial Day Weekend means the opening of Splash Away Bay Waterpark at Quassy Amusement Park. It features sixteen slides, including rocket rapids. Rev your engines for tradition! The Trans Am Memorial Day classic is 'on' all weekend at Lime Rock Park with modern and vintage race cars. It's Royal Family and Market Weekend at Robin Hood's Medieval Faire, in it's sixteenth year. Enjoy live performances, eat turkey legs and shop artisan wares. Visit the Revolutionary War Encampment at the Webb Deane Stevens Museum on Saturday. See cooking and musket demos, hear period music and take camp tours. Sunday, hunt for treasure-like furniture or knick-knacks – among hundreds of vendors at the beloved Elephants Trunk Flea Market, open for the season! Have a great weekend, Everyone! Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
CT legend Katharine Hepburn springs to life in ‘Tea at Five' at Ivoryton Playhouse
Carlyn Connolly knows the challenge she accepted by starring in 'Tea at Five' at the Ivoryton Playhouse as Hollywood icon Katharine Hepburn in the same part of Connecticut where the legendary actress grew up and lived for most of her life. Connolly is appearing as Hepburn in the one-woman play by Wethersfield native Matthew Lombardo at the Ivoryton Playhouse on the same stage where Hepburn performed in 1931. The legend is that Hepburn, who became an actress while at Bryn Mawr College, came home for the summer and convinced Milton Stiefel, who opened the Ivoryton Playhouse just a year before in a former union meeting house in the Ivoryton section of Essex, to let her be in one of her productions. With characteristic chutzpah, Hepburn angled for larger roles than she would otherwise be considered for by arguing that her friends and family would fill the auditorium. 'Tea at Five' takes place in Hepburn's Connecticut home, the Fenwick estate in Old Saybrook. The same town that now boasts the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center, which also houses a museum of Hepburn memorabilia. 'Tea at Five' has other local roots. It had its world premiere in 2002 at Hartford Stage starring Kate Mulgrew as Hepburn and later came to The Bushnell in Hartford on tour. Other Lombardo works that premiered in Connecticut include 'High,' which starred Valerie Harper at TheaterWorks Hartford in 2010 and the original one-act done by TheaterWorks in the early years of its 'Christmas on the Rocks' holiday show that became the Dr. Seuss parody 'Who's Holiday.' Connolly has done two previous shows at the Ivoryton Playhouse, 'The Great Gatsby' and 'Cabaret.' She feels the aura of the historic venue, a summer stock theater where stars from Marlon Brando to Groucho Marx to Ethel Waters appeared in plays and musicals from the 1930s into the '70s. In the '80s and '90s the theater was run by a summer repertory company, the River Rep. It became a year-round theater around 25 years ago under the leadership of Jacqueline Hubbard, who is directing 'Tea at Five.' 'I come to this area two to four times a year,' Connolly said, describing both Hepburn and the playhouse as iconic. 'She actually performed on the Ivoryton stage. She was part of this community. She described Fenwick, her home, as her paradise. This is an intrinsically Connecticut story.' While the play takes place entirely at Fenwick, its two acts take place over 40 years apart. In the first act, a young Hepburn has retreated to Connecticut after the failure of several back-to-back films. She wonders if she still has a career. In the second act, Hepburn is a bonafide Hollywood legend but is also presented as a survivor of a difficult relationship with her longtime romantic partner and frequent co-star Spencer Tracy, of countless struggles to assert herself when dealing with producers and others in the movie industry and of a recent traffic car crash which requires her to wear a cast on her leg. Connolly also notes that 'a hurricane has come through in the interim' between the acts. Connolly said she and Hubbard agreed not to do a close impersonation of Hepburn — the subject of countless impressions by stand-up comedians throughout her long career. Instead, they decided to go with 'an embodiment of the flavor' of the singular Hepburn, capturing her attitude without resorting to mimicry. The costume for the second act 'will exemplify her later-in-life style,' Connolly said. There'll be 'some make-up to show how she's aged, but we don't want to force it, just suggest it.' Connolly studied for the role by seeing every one of Hepburn's 43 films and reading several major biographies about her. She watched the films out of order, starting with one of Hepburn's biggest hits 'The Philadelphia Story' and 'working backward' toward her earliest work. In those early films, Connolly saw evidence of Hepburn's real-life rebelliousness. 'Being buried in an ensemble piece, even one like 'Stage Door,' was something she fought against. Her move to more distinctive roles that stood out from the others was by her own design.' Connolly said watching two 1935 Hepburn releases, 'Sylvia Scarlett' and 'Alice Adams,' on the same day was revelatory. ''Sylvia Scarlett' was the last film where she was really leaning into her boyish side, while in 'Alice Adams' she's playing this stereotypical beautiful young woman. Both these movies were flops. I really enjoyed watching them back to back.' Later in Hepburn's long career, 'she goes from playing a marriageable leading lady to a series of spinsters. You see that as well as how the cinema changes over the years' from colorful comedies like 'The Madwoman of Chaillot' to grittily realistic adventures like 'The African Queen,' which Hepburn insisted be filmed on location, Connolly said. Connolly furthered her research into Hepburn's life by getting to know the Old Saybrook area and visiting The Kate. 'I loved seeing those items of hers and reading actual letters she wrote.' The curator of the Hepburn exhibits at The Kate will be doing some talkback events following certain performances of 'Tea at Five.' Outside of her embodiment of Hepburn, Connolly has been developing a one-woman show of her own, a 50-minute musical called 'Thursdays at 4:15,' written by Andre Catrini, that has been presented at some cabaret theater spaces. This summer, she will appear in the world premiere of the musical 'Edvard' about the artist Edvard Munch at the Vineyard Playhouse in Massachusetts. But for now, Connolly is Katharine Hepburn. 'This is a once in a lifetime thing for me,' she said. 'It's a great challenge. There are people around here who knew her. I want to really do it well. I want to do her proud. She looked for challenges, too.' 'Tea at Five' by Matthew Lombardo, directed by Jacqueline Hubbard, runs May 15 through June 8 at the Ivoryton Playhouse, 103 Main St., Ivoryton. Performances are Wednesdays at 2 p.m., Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. $60, $55 seniors, $25 students.
