Butler's Cinema Scene

The Dames: Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench

“TEA WITH THE DAMES” My rating: B- 

84 minutes | No MPAA rating

“Tea With the Dames” is a slapdash affair, less a well-crafted documentary than a fly-on-the-wall peek at a reunion of four great English actresses.

Theatre geeks will be captivated. Others perhaps not so much.

The “dames” of the title are Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins, all of whom have received that honorary title from Queen Elizabeth for their contributions to English arts.

The youngest is 83, the oldest 88; one of them is blind; two are widows; the other two apparently are divorced (although their present marital status is never addressed).

For this doc director Roger Michell assembled the four at Plowright’s lovely country home (the one she shared with the late Sir Laurence Olivier) and over the course of a long weekend filmed them talking and sipping the occasional cordial.  The conversations are illustrated with clips and photos from the women’s illustrious careers.

Over the course of the film the ladies discuss their careers, their craft, their private lives (within limits). Occasionally director Michell attempts to steer the conversation, not that anyone pays him much attention. (“Let’s talk about aging,” suggests his off-camera voice. “Fuck you, Roger,” one of the dames shoots back.)

“Tea…” has no format, really.  The girls talk about what they damn well want to talk about.

All four recall turning down offers to essay Shakespeare’s “Cleopatra” because they doubted they were attractive enough to portray such a notorious femme fatale.

Atkins breaks everyone up by relating how as a girl she worked with an amateur company whose initials — K-Y — were boldly embossed on the performers’ shirtfronts. “I didn’t understand why the audiences were laughing,” she recalls.

Smith describes the between-scene banter on the set of the film “Othello,” for which Laurence Olivier wore heavy dark makeup to portray the jealous Moor. She greeted the star with: “How now, brown cow?”

Smith also gets props for referring to her children — all children, really — as “very small people running around.”

Of their relatively new status as dames, the ladies note that they can still swear…only now they do it exclusively in private.

Plowright says of Olivier, “It was a great privilege to share his life…as well as a nightmare.”

All four agree that among the greatest performances they ever saw was that of Soviet spy Kim Philby, who shortly before defecting to the USSR went before the news cameras to good-naturedly quash rumors of  his traitorous behavior.

And so it goes. No earthshaking revelations here. Just some old friends hanging out.

For many of us, that’s more than enough.

| Rober W. Butler