Hepburn Semper Kate

By T.E. Kalem

A MATTER OF GRAVITY by ENID BAGNOLD

Legend has it that Sophocles wrote a play at 90 and used it as evidence to refute his son, who wished to seize the aged dramatist's estate on the ground that he was senile. Sophocles won the case. It is to be feared that if Enid Bagnold, 86, were put to the test via A Matter of Gravity, she would not fare quite so well.

Without Katharine Hepburn's high-voltage presence, this play would have flickered out on opening night.

Hepburn plays Hepburn in the guise of Mrs. Basil, an aging aristocrat who presides over a 200-year-old country mansion with the formidable whimsicality of a genteel Caligula. While she professes a regard for tradition, she is singularly permissive about the succession of weirdos who populate the play.

Fizzed-Out Schweppigrams. Her maid Dubois (Charlotte Jones) is a les bian built along the lines of a sumo wrestler. When Dubois is not knocking back the gin, she levitates offstage, and there is plaster in her hair to prove it. An other lesbian, Shatov (Elizabeth Laurence), arrives with her girl friend Elizabeth (Wanda Binson) in tow. Two homosexuals enlarge the circle of Mrs. Basil's menage, and the queerest sur prise of all is that, under her cafe-au-lait tan, Elizabeth is black, and her hand is won in interracial marriage by Mrs. Basil's beloved grandson.

The cast seems to go gaga about being on the same stage with Katharine Hepburn, and so does Hepburn. She delivers the fizzed-out Schweppigrams that pass for lines as if La Rochefoucauld had bottled them. Ask your neighbor hood palmist what they, or the play, mean. As for Hepburn, she may or may not care. Give a star a star turn and vanita somnia vincit.

T.E. Kalem

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