Here's to you Mrs Robinson

By GREG DIXON

It's nearly lunchtime and there's a madman waving his weapon about just off Ponsonby Rd.

Seated in a dirty, white leather director's chair in a muggy converted office space, he's staring hard at his captives and clutching a handgun. Auckland Theatre Company director Simon Prast - the madman in question - is intent on getting the best from his cast.

Actors Emmeline Hawthorne and Paul Ellis seem utterly unfazed by the plastic prop, however. Again and again, at Prast's exhortation, they repeat a section of a scene, apparently lost in the thesp's process of bringing the printed word alive. This deja vu moment is crucial to The Graduate - and all three know it. It's the pivotal scene where Ellis' Benjamin Braddock declares his love for Hawthorne's Elaine before she accuses him of virtually raping one of pop culture's most memorable jaded alcoholics, her mother, Mrs Robinson.

But Prast, who is soon to take up a new role as director of the inaugural Auckland Festival, is clearly no nutter, despite the silly gun.

In what might be dubbed a casting coup - though knowing Prast, it's undoubtedly a carefully thought-out PR strategy - he has cast two Hawthornes for The Graduate.

Emmeline's mother, Elizabeth, will play the redoubtable Mrs R. It will be the first time the 50-year-old and her 22-year-old daughter, a Shortland Streeter, have appeared together on stage.

The pair are from an acting family, of course. Elizabeth's former husband, Raymond, is an Auckland theatre stalwart and their other daughter, Sophia, appeared most recently in the ATC's sell-out seasons of The Rocky Horror Show.

So it was possibly only a matter of time before Elizabeth and Emmeline met on the same stage.

But this mother and daughter playing The Graduate's mother and daughter will certainly add an interesting little frisson to a play which has had successful runs in the West End and on Broadway.

Seated on a chair in the rehearsal space's green room and puffing a roll-your-own, the boisterous Emmeline declares herself excited by the prospect of playing alongside her mother.

"I've really savoured watching mum work," she says of rehearsals. "She's going to hate me saying these flattering things but it's very, very fulfilling for me."

Hawthorne senior, slouched on a low red couch beside junior, looks unimpressed by the compliment and adds quietly there's no need for such comments. She does believe, however, that they have a mother-daughter shorthand. Emmeline agrees.

"When I watch mum working I know exactly what is ticking through her mind and where she's at with her process and why she might start in a certain place [in the scene] and where she'll play with a line. There's definitely a shorthand. The clarity of the line of communication is definitely enhanced."

Which, one has to say, is rather what the play is not about. The Graduate is, at its essence, a satire of the clash of generations set during a period - the restless, revolutionary 60s - when youth definitely did not have clarity in the line of communication with parents.

Originally published in 1963 as a novel by Charles Webb - he was just 23, a year older than his protagonist Benjamin - it was a semi-autobiographical work that originally gained much attention from critics and little from readers.

It was only after it was optioned (for the even then paltry sum of $40,000) and found its way into the hands of scriptwriter Buck Henry and film and stage director Mike Nichols, that The Graduate became something of an era-defining phenomenon.

Released as a film in 1967 featuring then unknown actor Dustin Hoffman as Braddock, the undeniably stunning Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson and a soundtrack by then red-hot folk duo Simon and Garfunkel, it became a mass audience hit as well as a critical success.

The plaudits rained. Esteemed critic Stanley Kauffman called it "a milestone in American cinema". It earned seven Oscar nominations, though on the night only Nichols took the gong for his direction. Simon and Garfunkel went on to scoop a Grammy for best soundtrack which included The Sound Of Silence and Mrs Robinson in 1969.

And then The Graduate disappeared into memory, the odd late night TV slot and to the video store.

It wasn't until nearly 20 years after it first appeared that its theatre rights were secured and a new adaptation was written by British writer/director Terry Johnson for the stage.

It opened in London in 2000 to critical enthusiasm, plenty of bums on seats and a succession of famous faces playing Mrs R, including ex-model Jerry Hall and actresses Kathleen Turner, Amanda Donahoe and Lorraine Bracco (The Sopranos).

The question, of course, is whether a child of the 60s like The Graduate has any place in a new and rather more cynical and circumspect century.

Hawthorne senior, whose vast and impressive stage and screen career stretches back to The Graduate's first flush, is certain it does.

"It investigates, in certain ways, the human condition, which fascinates us perennially, if that's the right word."

Her daughter says the context and ideas of the play - it's set not long after Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech - have not changed in 40 years.

"This is the story of the relationship between parent and child and coming to see yourself as a separate entity from these people. I think my character's journey in the play, and Mrs Robinson's and Benjamin's, are all aligned. Benjamin is fighting the parental world, these grotesques, but in a confused and introverted way. Whereas Elaine is looking at it from a far more open-hearted place.

"I think Mrs Robinson looks to this child and sees all the things that she couldn't have for herself. But she came from an era where if you found yourself pregnant at 19 and unmarried there was only one choice.

"Mrs Robinson, Benjamin and Elaine are all rebels with the same cause, it's just coming out in different ways."

Prast's reading of the play will stay true to the 60s. The costume design illustrations on the walls of the rehearsal space have the buttoned-down but swinging look of the period's WASPish families, and the show will use the film's soundtrack.

"You don't try to repaint the Mona Lisa," says Hawthorne seinor.

It will also feature - which possibly explains the famous faces overseas - Mrs R's brief nude scene.

Hawthorne senior declares herself unconcerned by it. I put it to her that it's there for little more than titillation.

"Well it's in the novel, it's in the film. I'm sure it got a lot of publicity in the West End but this is much more than a play about a poor old duck taking her clobber off."

Indeed. It certainly plays on film as an extremely witty piece, summed up nicely by the tagline: "This is Benjamin. He's a little worried about his future." And it dissects and satirises family relationships, expectations, aspirations, disappointments, desires and life decisions. And unlike so much entertainment now, it doesn't come pre-digested, Hawthorne senior says.

"It's not patronising to the audience because ... you have to fill it in. It doesn't tell you he is this, he thinks this. It's quite skeletal and open for the actors and the audience - you have to work."

Even if you're a director with a gun.

* The Graduate opens at the Maidment Theatre on Thursday and runs until March 29.