By Christopher Cappiello

What is it about actress Kate Mulgrew and strong, larger-than-life characters? Last year she played a thinly-veiled version of Ethel Barrymore in the Ahmanson's production of The Royal Family. She spent seven seasons on Star Trek: Voyager as Capt. Janeway, the first female commander of a Star Fleet ship. And now she rolls into Pasadena with Tea at Five, a one-woman show in which she portrays Katherine Hepburn, the ultimate in strong-minded Hollywood royalty. "They seem to come my way," she explains, perched with Hepburnesque ease in a leather armchair in the Pasadena Playhouse's elegantly appointed library. "I've always played strong women. Of course that must be my personality -- the oldest in a very large Irish Catholic family."

Throughout her long career, which began with a stint as Mary Ryan in the original cast of Ryan's Hope, Mulgrew has reminded others of Hepburn. While the physical resemblance is minimal -- Mulgrew is shorter and softer than the flinty old Kate -- there is something in her husky voice, confident delivery, and direct manner that bring to mind the great Hepburn. "I was compared to her a great deal when I was young," she reveals. "Oscar Wilde was right, comparisons are odious. It got so it blighted my own mission as an actress." It was her Hepburn-like quality that got playwright Matthew Lombardo interested in creating Tea at Five in the first place. "I had a great friend, she's died since, Nancy Addison," Mulgrew reveals. "And she was Matthew's pal. And one day they were lying in bed watching me on Star Trek and he said to her, 'That girl should play Hepburn.' And Nancy said, 'That girl is my best friend! Why don't you write it and I'll get it to her.' And he flew to Miami the next day and wrote it in three days."

The play's two acts take place 45 years apart, with Mulgrew playing a coltishly young Kate in Act One and the more familiar, head-shaking legend in Act Two. "We know Kate Hepburn in her 70s. She's familiar on some level to almost all of us," Mulgrew says of the later act. "So everybody's ready to go there," she adds, in an eerily spot-on Hepburn voice, with the unmistakably quivering quality of the actress' later years. "It's the young one," she says, switching in an instant to the sharper, more off-putting tone of the 1930s Hepburn. "She had none of the containment of the older Kate. She was all over the place. Not to mention the fact that in Act One she's driven by the fact that she thinks she's not going to work again. She's waiting to hear if she's going to get Scarlett O'Hara. She believes that she will, but is deeply, deeply frantic. She's been labeled box office poison."

When Tea at Five was first produced in 2002, Mulgrew did extensive research on Hepburn, trying to get to the heart of her character and also trying to like her. "She had many qualities which I thought were not attractive," she reveals. "So I thought, 'How am I going to get to like Katherine?' And that's when the fun really started." During rehearsals, Mulgrew locked herself in her hotel room, "which [Hepburn] did a lot." The actress ordered the same plain steak and salad that Hepburn favored, and "for weeks all I did was eat the steak, watch the movies, and I probably read, in four weeks, maybe 30 books. Every autobiography, biography, ancillary biography, anything that had anything to do with her at that time. And I became singularly obsessed with Katherine Hepburn," she concludes in a dramatic whisper.

What did all this research reveal? "It was like cold case murders," she recalls. "Something is going on here and I am close to it. What is it?" she asks in another hushed tone. After a dramatic pause, Mulgrew reveals, "She was lying to everybody! She wasn't, I don't think, at all who she presented herself to be." And that was the secret that unlocked Mulgrew's affection for her subject and breathed life into her performance. "What Hepburn had that captured our imagination was this confidence, but it was a thin veneer. Believe me, when she threw the contract down on Louie B. Mayer's table and said, 'We're gonna do it my way or you buy me out,' she was rolling the dice!"

Mulgrew refers to her performance as a "realization," not an impersonation. "My horror with a piece like this would be to ever fall into an impersonation. I leave that to the great drag queens of our culture," she says with a hearty laugh, "They do her very well." When asked about Hepburn's enduring appeal to gay men and lesbians, Mulgrew pauses for a moment and concludes, "I think that gay men and gay women like their actors to be unique, first, and secondly, strong. Hepburn fought for herself and her own opinions and her own absolute manner and style. And she won! For a gay person in this culture, even though it's 2005, it is still a fight. And I think she thought herself oppressed. And every day she ripped down another door."

Several recent biographies have questioned Hepburn's sexuality. "Laura Harding was her friend, the woman who traveled with her everywhere," Mulgrew explains, referring to the American Express heiress with whom Hepburn maintained a close friendship for many years. "That's what the rumors were about her in Hollywood ... I don't know if she slept with Laura, but she liked her presence. It quickened her pulse and gratified her. I think she had a really hot thing for Spencer Tracy, and I think that she could find women attractive, yes."

When asked how audiences have differed from city to city on her three-year, on and off tour, she says, "You'd be very surprised. Hartford [where Hepburn was born] just loved it. But I wouldn't have put money on that. No way! Phoenix adored it. Seattle adored it. San Francisco didn't. San Francisco! Liberal, right? San Francisco is a very self-satisfied city." When considering how Pasadena Playhouse audiences will take the show, Mulgrew offers, "It's mellow here, but here will be the greatest authentic appreciation of Hepburn. These dames will remember and have some familiarity."

The next stop for Tea at Five will be across the pond. "London called last month," Mulgrew announces, with more than a hint of Hepburnesque drama. "I think the West End wants it. And I'd like to do Germany because most of my fans are in Germany." By that she means the loyal if slightly loopy Star Trek fans. "Oh, they follow me all over the world! They'll come and stay for two weeks, and have done. They'll take a block of hotel rooms and they'll see it every night," she says, slamming the arm of her chair for emphasis. "And they'll stand outside and they'll give me notes."

As for the immediate future, this strong woman who has made a career playing strong women will devote some time to hearth and home. "I haven't stopped working for a decade straight. And I do have a husband, whom I'd take a bullet for [longtime Ohio Democratic leader and 2002 gubernatorial candidate Timothy F. Hagan]. So I better just put my money where my mouth is now and that means you have to shut up and be with the person that you love. And he runs Cleveland and that's the way it is and sometimes I have to go home and cook the dinner, you know!" she says with a laugh. "That's what I'll do when this is over."

Tea at Five runs through Oct. 2 at the Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. For tickets or more information, call (626) 356-PLAY, or visit www.pasadenaplayhouse.com.