July 24, 2019
'Dunaway Dearest' – Actress Out of 'Tea at Five' Broadway Run Over Erratic Behavior
READ TIME: 4 MIN.
Faye Dunaway may have been playing Katharine Hepburn onstage recently in Boston, but backstage she became Joan Crawford, with behavior right out of "Mommie Dearest."
Dunaway was fired on Wednesday from "Tea at Five," Matthew Lombardo's one-person show in which the Oscar-winning, 78 year old actress played Hepburn convalescing from an automobile accident in her Connecticut home. Lombardo had pared his two-act play (written in 2002 for actress Kate Capshaw) down to one-act to accommodate Dunaway, who was making her return to Broadway after 35 years.
"Producers Ben Feldman and Scott Beck have 'terminated their relationship' with the Oscar winner, according to a representative, who also says plans are in place for a West End staging with a new performer early next year,"
What led to her firing was events surrounding the July 10th performance of the play at the Huntington Avenue Theatre which Riedel says was "canceled moments before curtain because Dunaway slapped and threw things at crew members who were trying to put on her wig, sources say. Enraged at the cancellation, Dunaway began 'verbally abusing' the crew. They were 'fearful for their safety,' said one source."
In the mid-1990s, Dunaway was famously fired from "Sunset Boulevard" in Los Angeles when, according to composer/producer Andrew Lloyd Webber, she couldn't sing.
An infamous voice mail from Dunaway from the time captured her anger at the firing.
Prior to her Boston opening, there were high hopes and good feelings amongst the principals in the production, who include Lombardo and director John Tillinger, who had directed the original production 17 years ago.
There were other issues as well' target='_blank'> she was late for rehearsals, sometimes by two hours; and she was uncomfortable for anyone - including the director and playwright - watch her while rehearsing. "Although she had the script for six months, sources claim she was never able to learn her lines. During the run of the play at Huntington she was fed lines and blocking through an earpiece," Riedel writes.
"One source says, '98 percent of the play came through the earpiece.'"
"While in rehearsal she left what one production source called 'troubling, rambling, angry' voicemails to the creative team during the middle of the night. She also insisted that no one wear white to rehearsals because it 'distracts me,' she said. When she was rehearsing on stage at the Huntington no one was allowed to move in the theater because that also distracted her." Riedel reports.
She also began to lose weight to such a degree that the producers contacted Actors Equity "to see if it was "ethical" to put someone in her state in front of an audience, sources say."
But her most telling "Mommie Dearest" moment happened on a late weekend in June when she s"demanded that staffers at the Huntington Theater get down on their hands and knees and scrub the floor of her dressing room, sources claim.
"She allegedly threw mirrors, combs and boxes of hairpins at the staff of the theater. She also pulled gray hairs out of her wig because she wanted to play a younger version of Hepburn than the playwright had written," writes Riedel.
"The producer knew they had to fire her when they had to cancel the July 10 performance because she physically and verbally abused several production members."
The producers, though, are planning on finding an actress to play Hepburn and open the play in London next Spring.
