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Mrs. Robinson, unzipped BY MOLLY WOULFE Northwest Indiana Times
Features Writer "Would you like me to seduce you?" Anne Bancroft's chilly come-on enflamed Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate" (1967). But Hoffman, as alienated college grad Benjamin Braddock, wasn't her only conquest in the coming-of-age film. Decades later, the mere name of Bancroft's alter ego still kindles fantasies. Mrs. Robinson is an icon of American cinema, the "older woman" who lures naive youths to her bed. HBO star Lorraine Bracco, filling Bancroft's high heels in the stage adaptation of The Graduate" (through March 14 at the Shubert Theatre), sympathizes with the brittle seductress. To her mind, Mrs. Robinson -- "Her name is Judith," she said firmly -- is a tragic heroine as adrift as her boytoy. "She's complex. She's very bright, very witty," rasped Bracco, 54, best known as Tony's analyst on "The Sopranos." "I think she's stuck in a time -- that time of the '50s, '60s -- where a woman's supposed to be perfect at everything. Bringing up children, and being a good wife and a mother and cook, all those things. And I don't think any of those things interest Mrs. Robinson." What makes the elegant vodka-sipper tick? "I don't know," said the Brooklyn native, nominated for an Oscar for her role as a mob wife in "Goodfellas." "She's unhappy and it manifests itself in many destructive ways." Kathleen Turner recreated Bancroft's role on Broadway in 2002 opposite Jason Biggs ("American Pie"). The production co-starred Alicia Silverstone as Elaine, Mrs. Robinson's daughter and unwitting rival for Benjamin's affections. The comedy, which owes twin debts to Charles Webb's novel and Mike Nichols' Oscar-winning film, closed after a year-long run. Jerry Hall, Kelly McGillis and Linda Gray -- whose leg graced the famous "Graduate" movie still -- also have waylaid Benjamins on stage. While critics have never embraced the show -- set in the late '60s and laced with snippets of Simon & Garfunkel songs from the movie soundtrack -- each actress to tackle the femme fatale role has earned headlines. Chalk it up to Mrs. Robinson's nude scene. The script calls for the formidable siren to strip (well, drop a towel) before her sexual prey. Call it her little way of goading Benjamin, her husband's employee, into an affair. Jonathan C. Kaplan, the real-life recent grad cast as Benjamin, admires his co-star's ability to stay in detached character. Bracco, who has about 30 films under her belt, had never done a nude scene before headlining "The Graduate" on Broadway. "She's actually very brave about the situation. She is lit so that it's a night effect, but the audience can still pretty much see everything," said Kaplan, a Stanford alum whose credits include "Life with Mikey." "There's a brutal honesty in the way she disrobes." Not that he tries to notice. Keeping his focus "is a little rough sometimes," the 23-year-old admitted. Bracco is as blase as her on-stage matron. After five seasons of playing Dr. Jennifer Melfi on "Sopranos," she was more terrified of live theater than flashing flesh. "This job has really been a total challenge and exhilarating for me," she said. Besides, Kaplan ("He's adorable!") is right. The lighting is terrific. "I would say it would make my mother look good," she said breezily. In fact, the nude scene is becoming her favorite part. Her blunt strip-tease. Benjamin's shock. The verbal thrusts that lead to the start of their affair. "I just like the way it's got peaks and valleys," Bracco said. "It's almost a story of its own."
NBC News Transcripts The Today Show - NBC - February 26, 2004 Thursday Actress Lorraine Bracco discusses being in "The Graduate" in Chicago Interviewed by: AL
ROKER and KATIE COURIC, co-host (Chicago): Anyway, meanwhile, what's a nice girl from Jersey doing in Chi-Town? Well, Lorraine Bracco stopped by, which is so nice. AL ROKER reporting: Come on over, Lorraine. COURIC: Hey, you. Ms. LORRAINE BRACCO ("The Graduate"): Hi. How are you? COURIC: How are you? You look beautiful. Ms. BRACCO: So do you, Katie. COURIC: Nice to see you. Ms. BRACCO: Hi, Al. ROKER: Hi, Lorraine. How are you? COURIC: So, tell me, you're in "The Graduate" right now. Ms. BRACCO: I am, I am. COURIC: In Chicago? Ms. BRACCO: I am. COURIC: How's that going? Ms. BRACCO: Great. I mean, Chicago's been a great town so far. I've never really been here. I get to spend three weeks and then I get to come home. COURIC: Oh, that's... ROKER: Here, you're cr--you've got a little tear in there. Ms. BRACCO: Oh, am I tearing? I'm sorry. COURIC: Well, you know what, it's so cold out--my eyes water a lot in the cold, as you know. Ms. BRACCO: You think it's cold? This isn't cold. ROKER: This is nothing. Ms. BRACCO: Come on. COURIC: Here, we've got to hold this closer, because we've got to be able to hear that... Ms. BRACCO: Oh, I have to hold this in my hand? ROKER: You've got so much to do, dab your eyes, hold the mic. COURIC: ...great--great raspy voice. So, you having a good time? Do you, by the way, do--are you in a scene where you're... Ms. BRACCO: Yes. COURIC: Have no clothes on? Ms. BRACCO: Have no clothes on, yes, that's true. COURIC: Wow. Ms. BRACCO: It's quick. And it's lit so well that, I always said, my mother would look good. COURIC: Really? Ms. BRACCO: Yes, mom, you would. Mom, you would look great. COURIC: Do you ever, though, get nervous, you know, doing that scene? Ms. BRACCO: You know, I never did theater before, so the first time I did it was on Broadway, and I was more nervous to be in front of a live audience, which you are used to. COURIC: Well, it's great to have you here. And, of course, we're all looking forward to the Ch--to "The Sopranos" starting... Ms. BRACCO: Correct. Yes. COURIC: ...a week from Monday--Sunday. ROKER: Yes. COURIC: I'm having a hard time. A week from Sunday... Ms. BRACCO: Correct. COURIC: ...will be the premiere of "The Sopranos." Can you give us any little preview of--it looks like it's going to be very violent, Lorraine, from the promotion I've watched. Ms. BRACCO: Oh, really? COURIC: Yeah. "Hell hath no fury." ROKER: "Like the family." Ms. BRACCO: I really can't remember, to tell you the truth. There's some violence, but, you know, that's part of being in the mob, no? COURIC: Yes, exactly. ROKER: How's Dr. Melfi doing? Ms. BRACCO: Good. ROKER: OK. Ms. BRACCO: She's doing good. ROKER: All right. COURIC: Well, we're so happy to see you. Good luck with everything. And we'll see you back in New York after your run of "The Graduate." Ms. BRACCO: All right. So usually I know people give you the key to the city. But, Al, I'm going to give you the key to my room. ROKER: Oh, baby. COURIC: Oh, my gosh. This is a family show. ROKER: "The Graduate." Oh, man. COURIC: Anyway. ROKER: Whoa. COURIC: Lorraine, thanks for stopping by. Ms. BRACCO: Love seeing you guys. ROKER: I have the vapors.
Chicago Daily
Herald February 24, 2004 Lorraine Bracco: From therapist to seductress By: Ted Cox Dr. Melfi is on the line. Lorraine Bracco has been fighting a cold, so her husky voice sounds even more raspy than usual. Yet the actress best known as Tony's psychiatrist on "The Sopranos" also sounds feisty and energetic as she talks on the phone from Birmingham, Ala., where she's in the midst of an eight-week tour playing Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of "The Graduate," which brings her to Chicago's Schubert Theater starting today. "It's a lot of fun for me," Bracco says. Yet, make no mistake, it took awhile for the Broadway play and the ensuing road trip to kick in as "fun." "It's a big change," she adds. Bracco first made a name for herself as a model in the '70s and moved on to movies in the '80s, earning an Oscar nomination for her role as a mobster's wife in Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas." But her only experience live onstage was doing a reading of David Rabe's "Goose and Tom Tom" with Sean Penn, Madonna and Harvey Keitel at Lincoln Center in the mid-'80s. In "The Graduate," she was suddenly expected to handle the lead role in a Broadway production - and one that featured nude scenes as well. "It was an age-appropriate role. The challenge for me was to be in front of a live audience," Bracco says. "I was really horrified and petrified, to tell you the truth, before, but now I'm really loving it." In fact, she grew comfortable remarkably quickly - and the nudity was the least of it. In a playful piece she did with "Sopranos" co-star James Gandolfini for Interview magazine during the play's Broadway run, she said, "I thought I was going to be a lot more freaked out by it. I think on film I would have been more freaked out, because film is less forgiving. ...But onstage it's lit so beautifully, it would make my mother look good." Getting past that left her free to enjoy the mental challenge of the role itself. It's an ideal part for an actress of a certain age - sexy, funny, angry, vulnerable - and it's no accident that, where Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin was considered the star of the original 1967 movie, it's the lead actress playing Mrs. Robinson who typically gets top billing onstage. "I just love her," Bracco says. "I've been playing Dr. Melfi now for a while. Dr. Melfi and Mrs. Robinson are absolutely two opposite people. So that's fun for me. "It's not a question of sophistication. It's smart," she adds. "It's a smart play. We're sure that Chicago will get everything. Boston got it. Boston was very hip. And, very surprisingly, Fort Myers (Florida) got it." Aside from Bracco, the touring cast is different from the Broadway production, with Jonathan C. Kaplan playing Benjamin, but otherwise the direction is the same, and Bracco plans no changes from her Broadway role. The complexity of the part is what makes it fresh night after night, and what drew her to the play. "I will absolutely search that out," Bracco says. "That's what makes everybody human. Once you take a role and play it and it's written very linear, it really ends up being quite flat and boring." That's not a problem with "The Graduate," much of it drawn from Buck Henry's sharp-witted dialogue for the film. And it's never been a problem with "The Sopranos," guided by creator David Chase, overseeing a talented group of writers. "I love it," Bracco says. "I think the writing is great. David has totally taken me into account in writing the role. She's complex. Both characters (Melfi and Mrs. Robinson) are extremely complex." Perhaps most complex is Melfi's relationship with Tony Soprano. Bracco glories first in the role of a psychiatrist playing a part for the benefit of the patient; she is markedly different in scenes where she plays the patient to Peter Bogdanovich's therapist. Yet there's also the matter of the mutual attraction between Melfi and Tony. "I think how she's drawn to him is he's a man who's very unhappy and makes himself ill," Bracco says, somewhat clinically, "and she, like most psychiatrists, is a caretaker." Yet, don't hold it against Bracco if she's perhaps holding something back. When "The Sopranos" returns for its fifth season, March 7 on HBO, it becomes clear that the relationship between Melfi and Tony isn't merely clinical. Without giving too much away, some of Bracco's nudity from "The Graduate" even makes its way back into "The Sopranos." "I can tell you I think it's still extremely exciting and well- written," Bracco says. "And some new characters are coming in." As for where the series is heading, she says only it's a certainty it will end after the sixth season, which will begin shooting early next year and probably debut in fall 2005. "That'll be it," Bracco says. After the three-week Chicago run, that'll be it for Bracco's role in "The Graduate" as well, at least for the planned future. What challenges beckon after that? Bracco says she'll keep her eyes open for new roles, but in the meantime there's a challenge of a different sort. "Well, I just bought a house," she says, in New York, "so I don't know what the (heck) I'm doing."
Any way Bracco looks at it she wins with 'The Graduate' February 24, 2004 BY MISHA DAVENPORT Staff Reporter -- Chicago Sun-Times And here's to you, Ms. Lorraine Bracco. There's an awful lot the Emmy-, Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated actress could be doing with her downtime from HBO's hit series "The Sopranos," in which she plays Tony Soprano's therapist, Dr. Melfi. Fortunately for fans, she has temporarily forgone film and television work for an eight-week stint in a touring stage production of "The Graduate," where she plays Mrs. Robinson. "She's a great character -- very complex. And, she's age appropriate," Bracco said by phone of her decision to tour in the role. It also gave her a chance to work for the first time onstage and hone her acting skills. "Performing in front of a live audience is horrifying," she said. "The fact is, you really have to rely on your co-star. Screw up, and you'd better pray they come through." The role also offered the 48-year-old actress a chance to travel. Though her previous television, film work and her career as a fashion model took her all over the world, she admits she's seen very little of this country. "I've been all over the world, but know the U.S. the least. So, to spend three weeks in Chicago and get paid -- it's fabulous," Bracco said. Bracco said she wasn't intimidated by playing a character made famous by Anne Bancroft in the original film. There's a whole new generation who have no clue about the 1967 Oscar-winning film or the original novel by Charles Webb, Bracco said. "It's not like kids are going to Blockbuster to rent 'The Graduate,' " she said with a throaty laugh. "Besides, the play was taken from the book, so it's different." As for a future onstage, Bracco said there are several roles she would love to play. "Right off the top of my head, Martha in 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' It's about relationships -- which I like -- and it's a character-driven play." As for what's in store when "The Sopranos" begins its new season on March 7, Bracco was tight-lipped. "I can tell you the season opener features some big scenes between Tony Soprano and myself," she said, "but that's it."
From Dr. Melfi to Mrs. Robinson Lorraine Bracco, lately of `The Sopranos', makes her stage debut in `The Graduate,' which opens in Chicago Tuesday By Chris Jones -- Chicago Tribune arts reporter FT. MYERS, Fla. -- On the stage, the clothes hit the floor. And in the audience, the retirees who make up the overwhelming majority of the Gulf Coast winter-theater audience break out into successive waves of enthusiastic applause. Clearly, one is never too old to enjoy a well-built young body. But closer inspection reveals it's not the disrobing of a young college graduate -- here, "The Graduate" -- named Jonathan C. Kaplan that has caused this Wednesday night stir in sleepy Ft. Myers. Lorraine Bracco, appearing in the first stage production of her entire life, has simultaneously slinked out onto the stage. It's as undemonstrative an upstage entrance as you could imagine, barely distinguishable from the scenery. A Mrs. Robinson more driven by "Basic Instinct" than Simon and Garfunkel, Bracco stands in the doorway in the half-light, hugging the shadows and doing very little in the way of acting except watching, very well. For the Florida touring stand of a critically panned Broadway movie spinoff (which opens at the Shubert Theatre on Tuesday), it's a notably complex moment. Bracco is functioning partly as a revealing cipher, partly as an object of desire, and partly just as everyone's excuse to stare at someone else. You cannot help but think of Tony Soprano and Dr. Jennifer Melfi. `Sopranos' questions The following morning, Bracco, 48, is having a fine-old time fighting off the advances of the local Fox -- the network affiliate, that is. For a woman who went numerous courthouse rounds with ex-husband Harvey Keitel over child custody in the 1990s, this is laughably easy. A succession of TV crews has shown up to try to get Bracco to reveal some plot secrets from the upcoming (and penultimate) season of "The Sopranos," in which she plays the fetishized shrink for whom James Gandolfini's Mob boss reserves his most revelatory conversations. After a long lull, the fifth season of David Chase's wildly acclaimed series begins March 7 on HBO. If the show's past season debuts are any guide, there is about to be a blaze of publicity. Bracco brushes off the "Sopranos" questions with platitudes such as "it will be a season of everything you never expect," and papers over her own nudity in "The Graduate" with the reusable if patently inaccurate line: "Any woman could look good in that light." But after barely a few minutes, the sycophantic TV people already have put down their broadcast weapons, pulled out their point-and-shoots, and snaked their tanned arms around Bracco's elegant upper body. "You don't understand," says the reporter from WINK-TV. "I'm such a huge `Sopranos' fan." As a photography professional fumbles to find a minuscule button on a $100 camera, Bracco squeezes someone's torso, throws her head back and laughs her loud, throaty, smoker's laugh. You can hear that clear cracking sound that accounts for a good chunk of her vulnerability as an actress. For many of her ilk, this kind of required thing is hell under the sun. For Bracco -- unusually extroverted for an actor -- it looks peculiarly enjoyable. It's probably because fame came late enough in life to be appreciated and wealth came late enough to be needed. By 1999, following those fights with Keitel, she was bankrupt and had a career seemingly on the decline. Now, neither is even close to being the case. Born in Brooklyn Bracco was born in Brooklyn. Her father worked in a fish market. Her mother was a British war bride. Her parents still are married after 57 years. "Still kicking," their remarkably friendly daughter says over a meal later that day, fixing her questioner with an intensely steely gaze. "Gotta love it." Bracco started out as a model in New York, but went to Paris at age 19. "I met an agent who asked me to go over there," she says. "My father gave me a plane ticket, put a hundred bucks in my pocket, and said if you don't like it, you can come home." Paris lasted a decade or so. It provided a French husband, Daniel Guerard, and two children. "Modeling," Bracco says, "opened up a lot of doors for me." Then Bracco came back to New York and tried to become an actress. She auditioned for the Actor's Studio -- mainly tagging along with Keitel, to whom she was married from 1982 to 1993 (in 1994, she married the actor Edward James Olmos, filing for divorce in 2002). Bracco credits playwright David Rabe for instilling her with the confidence to turn from model to actress. "I did a reading with him," Bracco says. "I was really horrible in it. I'd always been a very bad reader out loud. As a kid, I was embarrassed. It's only really recently since `The Sopranos,' where we have table readings, that I can read out loud. After we read Rabe's play, I shot up and ran out of the room. He grabbed me and told me I was terrific. With tears popping out of my face, I told him he didn't have to lie. . . . A couple of months later he called me up and offered me a role." Bracco emerged as a movie actress. She was first widely noticed in "Someone To Watch Over Me," a 1987 Tom Berenger movie, and appeared in some minor titles in the late 1980s. But in 1990, Bracco's critically acclaimed performance as Karen Hill in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" snagged her an Academy Award nomination and predictions of a bright cinematic future -- assuming she could find roles emphasizing her gritty outer-borough quality. She worked a lot thereafter, for sure, but titles such as "Switch," "Medicine Man" and "Radio Flyer" hardly kept her on everybody's lips. In 1999, David Chase's "The Sopranos" changed all that. Chase initially was considering Bracco for the character of Carmella, which ended up being played by Edie Falco. "I told David I'd done Carmella," Bracco said. "I told him I wanted Dr. Jennifer Melfi. He was surprised." That seemingly smaller role has turned Bracco into a household name. "Television has made me very recognizable," she says, immediately after her request for a hamburger had occasioned the appearance of her resort's executive chef in the temporary role as waiter. "When I want to yell at the kids in the supermarket, that's not a good thing. But I understand people's obsession with `The Sopranos.' I get a lot of guys who think they need to come to Dr. Jennifer Melfi. I always tell them my practice is very busy and that they should call Dr. Phil. That amuses me." Theatrical role Dr. Melfi is an unusually theatrical role by television standards. The character has almost always been seen in a confined space -- mainly sitting in a chair. The majority of scenes are with only one other actor, Gandolfini. Bracco's character has a realistic presence in the show -- but she also stands outside it. "What you might call theatrical, I'd call stillness," she says. "The scenes are two people sitting in a chair and talking to each other. Right from the pilot, I knew it would either be the most boring thing you ever looked at, or the most exciting." Still, Dr. Melfi is a peculiar character in other ways. The character's success seems to come in part from Bracco's flat, laconic, ambiguous style of delivery that seems to inhabit all these areas -- the realistic, the stylized and the overtly theatrical. "In the show, David Chase is Melfi," Bracco says, without a shred of uncertainty, eyes dancing in her pleasure certainty at that. "All his characters are flawed characters. That's why it struck a chord in America. And we had the freedom by being on HBO. We've been able to go to the belly of the beast" Although the cast has been doing the show for months, Bracco has committed to only eight weeks of "The Graduate" -- playing Raleigh, Boston, Ft. Myers and, for the next three weeks, Chicago. She also played the role on Broadway as a replacement for Kathleen Turner. "I really did this tour for me. I never got to where I wanted to be with Mrs. Robinson on Broadway," Bracco says. "I never got to the bottom of her. This was all about me." Yet while "The Graduate" has proved resilient at the box office, there's an obvious downside to schlepping around the country on its back. Be it with Turner, Jerry Hall or indeed Bracco herself, the show hasn't exactly been a critical favorite. It got harsh criticism on Broadway (where it was shut out of the Tony Awards), was panned in the West End, and, much of the time, at least, it's met the same fate on the road. "Never, ever, ever, anywhere, with anyone has this show got good reviews," Bracco says, speaking louder and louder. "Nor do I expect them. People have a good time. I like that it deals with kids trying to find out who they are in this world and looking at their parental units and discovering how screwed up most people are." We seem to be returning to "The Sopranos." But Bracco is on a role. "No critic is going to tell me anything. . . . I feel good as a woman who is almost 50. You can't please them all the time. The truth of the matter is that I'm having fun and doing something I've never done before. That "something" is act on a stage. "Imagine," she says, grinning with pleasure. "I was petrified of appearing before a live audience. I was more afraid of doing that than anything."
A little bit about Lorraine Bracco - the stage's Mrs. Robinson - for your files By NANCY STETSON ... Naples Daily News Neapolitan Online February 10, 2004 When actress Lorraine Bracco was growing up, she was voted "the ugliest girl in the sixth grade" by her classmates at her Long Island grammar school. "It happened on the school bus," Bracco recalls. "It did hurt. I was devastated. I sat on my daddy's lap, telling him I didn't want to go to school again. And he said, 'Tell me why.' And I said, 'It's too embarrassing.' "He had to pry it out of me. He picked my chin up and said, 'I don't know about them, but you're the most beautiful girl in the world to me.'" Bracco later moved to France where she became a Paris fashion model with the Wilhelmina Agency, a fashion superstar for Jean-Paul Gautier. She worked for Radio Luxembourg as a disc jockey and began her career in film, appearing in French comedies and working with Italian director Lina Wertmuller. She returned to the United States where she acted in films such as "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Good Fellas," "Switch," "Radio Flyer" and "Medicine Man." Her role as Dr. Melfi, a psychiatrist on HBO's runaway hit series, "The Sopranos," brought her more recognition and awards. Recently, Bracco has been touring with the national production of "The Graduate," playing Mrs. Robinson, an older woman who seduces Benjamin, the recent college graduate of the title. The show plays at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers Wednesday, through Sunday. "She's a great character, a great woman to play," Bracco says in her distinctively raspy, New York voice. "She's an American icon, in my opinion. (When you're an actor) you look for characters to play that are very textured and layered. "She should've been born 30 years later. She was not happy being in that traditional, conventional role of wife/mother. That wasn't for her. And she drinks. She's a character. She's very angry and bitter. She's very unhappy. It's very sad. She married the wrong man, and in the '60s, they didn't divorce, you stuck with it. You made believe that everything was very perfect." In addition to marital discontent and career aimlessness, the show also examines the dynamics of an older woman/younger man relationship. "There's no doubt about it, men always went out with younger girls," Bracco says. "As a woman you might've looked twice (at a younger man), but you kept going. An older woman with a younger man, trust me, people are still nutty about that. ... There's always been a double standard." But, Bracco reasons, "I think because there are more women than men, if older men are going to go after younger women, older women have nowhere else to go (but to younger men). I'm 49, and I don't feel any different than I did when I was 18. But trust me, I don't want to go back there. I feel much wiser and I'm much happier." What would happen if her character, Mrs. Robinson, went to her "Sopranos" character, Dr. Melfi, for counseling, she's asked. "Dr. Melfi would make a lot of money, oh boy!" Bracco hoots. "Wouldn't that be incredible? (Mob boss) Tony Soprano and Mrs. Robinson as your patients? Dr. Melfi rocks, she's the one. I've thought of that. I said to myself, 'Imagine, of the two characters in the world, in your twentieth century writing, wouldn't it be funny to have those two patients?" People come up to her to tell her their troubles all the time, mistaking the actor with her role. "I tell them to see Dr. Phil," she says playfully. "I don't have enough hours during the week, but Dr. Phil is available." Bracco was even honored by The American Psychoanalytic Association for her portrayal of Dr. Melfi. "I told them when I received my award, 'Thank you, but you must all be crazy,'" she says. "We had a lot of good laughs that day. It's very funny. They're excited about the show, because it really portrays a psychiatrist and a patient correctly. It's what therapy is about. It doesn't turn the character into a psycho-killer, which is what happens in most television movies." The psychiatrists have also seen more men going into therapy over the past four or five years, she says. "When it's truly portrayed, it takes away from the stigma. Their instinct is, if Tony Soprano can go, they can go. They look for a woman shrink." Portraying Dr. Melfi is more challenging than playing Mrs. Robinson, Bracco says. "It's very hard for me. Dr. Melfi is more controlled. In real life, I'm very animated. She's a real stretch for me, nothing like I am in life. I'm much more vivacious, alive, silly, emotional. I have all those temperaments Dr. Melfi does not. It's hard for me to play her. Mrs. Robinson is a lot more fun to play. "Dr. Melfi is little. If you take your hand and squeeze it in a fist, that's Dr. Melfi. Mrs. Robinson — throw your hands up in the air. It's so different." Bracco, who's worked with directors such as Martin Scorsese, Blake Edwards, Gus Van Sant and Wertmuller, considers herself lucky. "I've worked with some of the great directors of our time. When you work with great people, you really pay attention," she says. "I've been really lucky. I'm just a little kid from Brooklyn. I am very grateful. I think anybody who finds work that they love to do is. Whoever can pay their rent and have heat in the house, is a very lucky person. If you make your living doing what you're impassioned by, there's nothing better, no other great way to live your life." Here’s to you Mrs. Robinson ‘Sopranos’ star Bracco graduates to the stage By DREW STERWALD, dsterwald@news-press.com Published by news-press.com on February 6, 2004 Don’t go to “The Graduate” expecting to see Mike Nichols’ movie classic re-created live onstage. The comedy coming Wednesday to Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers reaches back to the Charles Webb novel that inspired Nichols’ revered film. “It couldn’t be further from the movie,” said Peter Lawrence, director of the touring production and a longtime friend of Nichols. “His movie was shot in 1967 and is very much a response to the time in which it was made. The book was published in 1963 and was really about that specific time.” Four years might not sound like a tremendous leap in time, but the satirical novel was written before the Kennedy assassination, a cataclysmic event in American history. “The Graduate” on stage remains a period piece set in the early ’60s and punctuated by some of the same folksy Simon and Garfunkel tunes that scored the movie. Will audiences decades later be able to relate? Lawrence thinks so, even if he acknowledges that guys like Benjamin Braddock don’t exist anymore. Heck, he calls the married woman he sleeps with “Mrs. Robinson.” Benjamin’s struggle to find himself, reject his parents’ values and settle his romantic quandary tap into some universal themes, Lawrence said in a phone interview from New York. “There are many novels and movies about young men looking for their place in the world,” he said. “This is that story but told from a literary point of view.” Benjamin’s seduction at the hands of the frustrated, alcoholic wife of his father’s business partner — the mother of the young woman he eventually falls in love with — plays a less dramatic role on stage than in the movie, he said. “She’s not a major character,” Lawrence said. “She’s really only a catalyst.” Still, it’s a juicy role for an actress. Lorraine Bracco of the HBO mob drama “The Sopranos,” plays the infamous Mrs. Robinson for eight weeks of the tour. She made her Broadway debut in the role last year. “She’s very textured and layered,” Bracco said from a tour stop in Raleigh, N.C. “She’s a very unhappy woman. She’s not really feeling very successful in her marriage or as a mother. That’s all women did in the ’60s.” Following in the seductive pumps of Kathleen Turner, Jerry Hall and Linda Gray — whose leg was memorably posed in the movie’s original poster — the 49-year-old Bracco disrobes on stage. She seems unfazed by the daily ritual of exposing herself to the ticket-buying public. “It’s so incredibly integrated into who she is, and it’s so short and lit so well. You don’t feel it’s inappropriate,” she said. Besides, it’s the character up there, not Lorraine Bracco, right? “The character is very, very far from me and far different from any character I’ve ever played,” she said. The Boston Herald ... January 25, 2004 Sunday 'Graduate' gives Bracco brake from mob scene By LAUREN BECKHAM FALCONE Maybe it's the gritty Brooklyn accent, or her roles as tough psychiatrist Dr. Melfi on the HBO hit series "The Sopranos" and the even tougher Karen Hill in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas," but it's hard to believe Lorraine Bracco was "horrified and petrified" at the thought of acting on the Broadway stage. "Really, I was heaving," the 49-year-old actress said of playing Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate" on Broadway last year. Bracco will reprise the role in the national tour, which returns to Boston's Colonial Theater for a two-week run beginning Tuesday. "(Broadway) was really hard. Much harder than what I thought," Bracco said in a telephone interview from her home in New York. "But I was so glad that I got through it. I lost 10 pounds. (The stage) is very different from being in front of the camera." Was it the nudity that put her over the edge? "Trust me, that was the least of my troubles," she said, laughing. "First of all, you're so beautifully lit, your GRANDMOTHER would look great. So, there's that and remember, it's like seven or eight seconds." Yet, the nude scene - performed by Mrs. Robinson alums Kathleen Turner, Jerry Hall, Amanda Donohoe, Anne Archer and Linda Gray - has received the most press. All that attention is "pretty nutty, in my opinion," said Bracco, who has more than 30 movies under her belt. Still, the trend of over-40 actresses taking it all off has taken hold of Hollywood and set tongues wagging. Diane Keaton bared all in "Something's Gotta Give," Kathy Bates dropped trou in "About Schmidt" and Helen Mirren and a host of other matrons stripped for "Calendar Girls." Bracco, for one, doesn't know what the fuss is about. "I think it's really all about how a woman feels about herself," she said. "And you know, are women who are 49, 55, perfect? No. We're supposed to be women our age, and who made up the rules that that's not good enough? I have two words for them and it ain't 'happy birthday.' " Still, she admits her theater dresser had to literally push her onto the stage those first two weeks in New York. So why torture herself in the first place? "Because I'd never done it before," she said. "I see myself as a serious actor and I needed to get over that stage fright." "The Graduate," set in 1960s California, is the coming-of-age story of Benjamin Braddock (played in the national tour by Jonathan C. Kaplan), a newly minted college grad who is seduced by the much older Mrs. Robinson. It sounds a little like headline-grabbing Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, who sparked another Hollywood trend: the older woman-younger man romance - which doesn't shock Bracco at all. "I say, if people are happy, then what's more important than that?" she said. "In the long run, men have been doing this forever. Why is there any taboo with a woman?" Bracco doesn't pay much attention to Hollywood celebrity or trends. She's content to tour for the next two months. "I've never been to Boston or Chicago or Raleigh, N.C.," she said. "I've traveled all over Europe and Africa, but there's a lot more to the United States than L.A. and New York. It's a bit of a learning experience for me. I mean, how great is it that my days are wide open so I can look in any museums, experience the cities?" After the tour, Bracco will settle back into her role as Dr. Melfi on the sixth season of "The Sopranos," which starts March 7. "Love it! Love it! Love it! I would love it if it never ended," she said. "I love working on it, I love watching it. It's incredibly well-made. I'm a huge fan." When Bracco took the "Sopranos" role, essentially to stay home with her daughter, Stella, she never knew the series would be such a runaway hit. "When I read the script it really made me stop," she said. "But when I saw the pilot, I said, 'Oh my God. Give me more!' I was absolutely blown away." Bracco was tight-lipped about any "Soprano" secrets but revealed, "It's a huge first episode involving Melfi and Tony. I'm in it a lot more this season." While Bracco is often recognized because of her "Sopranos" role, she's not surprised when people come up to her and spew quotes from the immensely popular "Goodfellas." "I knew it would be an experience that would last forever," she said. But for now, Bracco is enjoying the best time of her career. "I'm much more relaxed," she said. "I'm not worried about whether or not I will work again. I've established myself as an actress and if they hire me, they'll get a good, solid performance, you know what I mean? That's all I wanted, to be a good actor." What would you like to talk about? Boston.com
Online News It's a tradition at Stanford University for graduating seniors to don their caps and gowns and then go see the movie "The Graduate." Nearly 600 of them did it last year, says Jonathan C. Kaplan. He, however, was the only one up for the role of Benjamin Braddock in a touring version of "The Graduate." "I wasn't sure I had the part," says Kaplan, "so I only told a select few people." Last week, Kaplan joined Lorraine Bracco -- well known for playing Tony Soprano's psychiatrist Dr. Melfi in "The Sopranos" -- for performances in Raleigh, N.C., and now settles in for a two-week run at the Colonial Theatre. Go! wondered if Kaplan was intimidated playing opposite Bracco's Mrs. Robinson? "Fortunately, my character is supposed to be intimidated by Mrs. Robinson, so any intimidation I've experienced the first week of the show works for the part. But I've not found her to be a diva. You hear of women coming into these roles and wanting green M&Ms in their dressing room, but every Mrs. Robinson [he's worked with Jerry Hall and Linda Gray] up through now, including Lorraine, has been very approachable and hasn't asked for too many bizarre things." Any "Sopranos" moments in "The Graduate?" Kaplan: "There is a point where she turns to me in bed and says, `What would you like to talk about? Anything at all. Would you like to talk to me about your childhood?' " And what if Tony Soprano saw the show? "Well, you know, if he sees me with his psychiatrist he might flip out a bit." 'Sopranos' star bares her soul, and more, onstage By Catherine Foster, Boston Globe Staff, 1/25/2004 In her role as Tony Soprano's shrink, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Lorraine Bracco shows off a great pair of gams, demurely crossed at the knees. As Mrs. Robinson in the new touring version of "The Graduate," which has its first performance Tuesday at the Colonial, she's going to bare a whole lot more. Like Kathleen Turner, who originated the theatrical role in London and on Broadway, Bracco is briefly nude onstage. Big deal, is her attitude. Unlike Turner, she's done nothing to get in shape and has no plans to. "I'm 49 years old. I am what
I am," she says, in her trademark gravelly voice. "I have nothing to
complain about. I think it's a terrible thing the market puts on women.
I'm happy. Am I perfect? When she started the role on Broadway -- a year ago, during a "Sopranos" hiatus -- it wasn't the nudity that worried her. "It was being in front of a live audience," Bracco says by phone from her upstate New York home. "The nudity is all of seven seconds, and it's such nice lighting you don't even know." "The Graduate" was her Broadway debut; she's done virtually nothing else onstage. "It was terrifying," she says. "I hope I'm more relaxed this time around." Bracco has made her living working in film and television. Her role as Dr. Melfi has won her multiple Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild award nominations. She was also Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a mobster's wife in "GoodFellas." "The Graduate" -- a coming-of-age story in which a confused college boy is seduced by an older woman and then falls for her daughter -- has strolled through the last 40 years in various incarnations. It was a first novel by Charles Webb in 1963. It became a hit film in 1967, with Anne Bancroft seducing Dustin Hoffman to the sounds of Simon & Garfunkel. In 2000, the sensational stage version emerged in London and moved to New York. Critics have liked Bracco's sultriness better than Turner's blowsiness but are lukewarm about the play. Bracco says that Dr. Melfi and Mrs. Robinson are both fairly somber characters who also share another trait: "They're both depressed," she says, "to Dr. Melfi-ize it. Mrs. Robinson is a very depressed woman. And Dr. Melfi is married to her work. She's not really in any kind of relationship that is satisfying to her, romantically." But aside from that, she says, these are very different women. "Mrs. Robinson is a product of the '50s and '60s. She's caught up in status and in an unhappy marriage. She's a woman who's willing to seduce their friend's son. Melfi wouldn't do those kinds of things. She does her own thing -- even though she drinks a little bit." "The Graduate" is far from a dark show, she says. "It's a fun show. It's very funny, very witty. There's great nostalgia to it. You have all that Simon & Garfunkel music." Bracco was born in Brooklyn to an Italian-American father who was a wholesale fish merchant and a mother who was an English war bride. Raised on Long Island, she was voted the "ugliest girl in sixth grade." Nevertheless, she was soon represented by the Wilhelmina Agency and started her career working as a fashion model in Paris. She went on to work in French films and as a DJ for Radio Luxembourg. Then in her late 20s, she returned to New York and started studying at the Actors Studio. There was just one little problem: She hated reading aloud. "As a kid, I made mistakes, I was humiliated in class," she recalls. "So I never read aloud until I wanted to be an actress." Bracco covered up by learning her lines for auditions ahead of time. But when "The Sopranos" started, she found out that the cast would be reading the script around a table every episode. "I went to David Chase," the show's creator, "and said, `I'm a very terrible reader.' And he said, `That's OK. You'll just get better.' Today, she says, she's improved "95 percent." Over the last few seasons, her role shrank compared with the early years, when Dr. Melfi's helping gangster Tony Soprano cope with family and work issues was a major plotline. The fifth season, which begins in March, is different. "I think I'm in it much more," she says. "There's a lot more going on between them [Dr. Melfi and Tony, played by James Gandolfini] this year than last. "I love those scenes," she adds. "When I get the script I can't wait to find out what goes on." She says she would love the show to go on forever. "I've loved every second of it. It's filmed so well. We have an incredible crew. Nothing is as well done as it." But the sixth season -- not yet filmed, and scheduled to air in 2005 -- will be the last. In the meantime, a girl's gotta work. Hence this tour -- which has the added attraction of taking the actress to new places offstage. "I've never been to Chicago or Boston," she says. "I know little of the US compared to my worldly travels." THEATER PREVIEW: Bracco graduates to Boston stage
Lorraine Bracco will star as Mrs. Robinson
in
By SHAMUS McGILLICUDDY ... The Patriot Ledger ... January 24, 2004 Lorraine Bracco says she has never been to Boston. She's seen Paris, where she once walked the runways as a fashion model, and Mexico, where she shot the 1992 film ‘‘Medicine Man.'' But the Brooklyn and Long Island native just never got around to making the three-hour drive north. Until now. ‘‘I'll probably visit some museums, check out some restaurants,'' the Oscar and Emmy nominated actress says. Bracco stars as Mrs. Robinson in the Broadway hit ‘‘The Graduate.'' In the midst of a national tour, the play will make a two-week stop in Boston. It runs from Jan. 27 to Feb. 8 at Boston's Colonial Theatre. Bracco, who has starred as Dr. Melfi on ‘‘The Sopranos'' and earned a best supporting actress Oscar nod for her performance in ‘‘Goodfellas'' in 1990, says she jumped at the chance to play Mrs. Robinson. ‘‘I just think she's an American icon,'' Bracco says. ‘‘She represents the '60s. Here's a woman who's very unhappy with her husband, who's depressed and unhappy and willing to seduce a young man, the son of a friend.'' Though times have changed since Charles Webb first published his novel in 1962, the story of ‘‘The Graduate'' still manages to shock audiences. It tells the story of Benjamin Braddock, an aimless college graduate who returns home to his family. Unsure of what to do with his life, Braddock soon finds himself seduced by Mrs. Robinson, the lonely and frustrated wife of his father's business partner. While carrying on an awkward affair with Mrs. Robinson, Braddock soon falls in love with her daughter Elaine. In Boston, Benjamin will be played by Jonathan C. Kaplan and Elaine by Devon Sorvari. Kaplan was in the 1993 movie ‘‘Life with Mikey, and acted opposite Natalie Portman in ‘‘The Diary of Anne Frank'' in 1998. Sorvari has appeared in many New York stage productions and was on the soap opera ‘‘All My Children.'' The 1967 film starred Dustin Hoffman as Braddock and Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson. It shocked audiences with its taboo subject. Nearly 40 years later, the story still has an impact. ‘‘I tell you, as a performer with an audience, they're pretty shocked by Mrs. Robinson's behavior, that she seduces this young man,'' says Bracco. ‘‘I have to say, it's pretty wild.'' Times have changed, Bracco admits. People are more liberal in the views toward sexuality. ‘‘But isn't it funny how acceptable it is for older men to be with younger women, but not for older women to be with younger men?'' Bracco reminds us that ‘‘The Graduate'' is a satire at heart. ‘‘It's a very funny play, as much as it has overtones of being serious. It's really quite funny.'' ‘‘The Graduate,'' adapted from the novel by playwright Terry Johnson, is Bracco's first stab at Broadway. ‘‘It's a very different medium,'' she says. Bracco said she will likely be nervous on opening night in Boston. But once she gets used to the theater, she'll get more comfortable. And though Bracco will only be in Boston for a two-week engagement, local audiences and people nationwide will be seeing her again very soon. The fifth season of ‘‘The Sopranos'' premieres on HBO in March. Bracco's character, a psychiatrist, has kept audiences on the edge of their seats during her intense, sometimes terrifying, therapy sessions with Tony Soprano, the brutal New Jersey crime boss. ‘‘The first episode has a big Melfi-Tony scene,'' Bracco says of Season Five. ‘‘I love their scenes together.'' Bracco promises that her character, often absent from the last ‘‘Sopranos'' season, will be much more of a fixture this season. That should come as no surprise. Tony's marriage fell apart last season. ‘‘Tony's a wreck,'' Bracco says. ‘‘There's nothing I can do for him.'' The Graduate - At The Colonial Theatre, 106 Boylston St., Boston. Jan. 27-Feb. 8. $30-$72. Ticketmaster 617/508-931-2787, www.ticketmaster.com.
'Sopranos' Star Performs In Raleigh In 'The Graduate' Bracco Plays Mrs. Robinson
In First Broadway Performance RALEIGH, N.C. -- A famous face is taking center stage in Raleigh. You may know her as the Tony Soprano's no-nonsense shrink on HBO's hit show "The Sopranos." Now, Lorraine Bracco is taking on Broadway as the sultry Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate." "Mrs. Robinson is -- today, we would call her a real piece of work," Bracco said. This is Bracco's first Broadway production. Her character, Mrs. Robinson, is a long-suffering alcoholic wife and mother, who takes the innocence of a young college graduate. "The stigma of having to be a good wife, perfect hair, perfect kitchen, perfect children -- all of those stopped her from being who she was and I think she became bitter and angry," Bracco said. In the play, Bracco has a nude scene and admits she was beside herself about having to bare it all as she seduced her young conquest in front of a live audience. Now, she asks, why not? "This is why I got to choose a career -- to do those things and not feel guilty about it," Bracco said. "Look, my kids were not shocked, so, it's fine by me." "The Graduate" may not be her last play, but Bracco said don't expect her to give up on Tony Soprano because she is a "Sopranos" junkie. "I have become hooked on ''The Sopranos.' Not because of me, but because of my friends," she said. "The Graduate" runs through
Sunday at the BTI Center in Raleigh. For times and ticket information,
visit
www.broadwayseriessouth.com. What would Dr. Melfi think of Mrs. Robinson?
Newsobserver.com Website So just what would Dr. Melfi think of Mrs. Robinson? The first is a psychotherapist on the television show "The Sopranos," the second the predatory older woman made infamous in the 1967 movie "The Graduate." And what they have in common is Lorraine Bracco, the Oscar-nominated actress. Since 1999, Bracco has played Jennifer Melfi, the beleaguered psychotherapist who copes with the anxieties and pathologies of crime boss Tony Soprano in the acclaimed HBO series (which begins its fifth season March 7). And in recent years, Bracco has also been one of several actresses to play the femme fatale Mrs. Robinson in the touring stage version of "The Graduate," which opens its Raleigh run Tuesday with Bracco in the lead role. "I think Dr. Melfi would say that she's in desperate need of medication," Bracco says with a laugh. "Mrs. Robinson is an angry, bitter, sad woman, not happy in her life or marriage. Somewhere, she missed the boat. Women in that situation have more hope now, but a lot are still stuck in the appearances of what a marriage should be. Unfortunately, status is still important." By now, Bracco is an old hand when it comes to portraying dicey marital situations. Her big-screen breakthrough came in 1987 as the wife of philandering cop Tom Berenger in the thriller "Someone to Watch Over Me." And she earned a supporting-actress Academy Award nomination for 1990's "Goodfellas," playing a mobster's wife. Initially, Bracco was offered a bigger role on "The Sopranos" -- as Carmela, the long-suffering spouse of Tony Soprano. But she turned down that part (which went to Edie Falco) and asked for Dr. Melfi instead. "I liked her," Bracco says of the part. "No, I loved her, and she was a different, more exciting role for me. I liked that she was smarter than him, which is what attracted him to her without him knowing it. There are a lot of very sophisticated parts of their relationship that go way beyond a friend or a doctor or a wife or any of those things. I also like that it has opened up therapy to a lot of men, taking away the stigma of what it is to have problems. It's not weak or bad to have problems, [expletive] just happens." So do people come to Bracco with problems, as if she's a real-life psychotherapist? "Sometimes," she says. "I just tell them all to call Dr. Phil." Help for Mrs. R. A number of real-life psychotherapists say that, judging from Bracco's portrayal on "The Sopranos," Dr. Melfi would definitely do right by Mrs. Robinson. Barry K. Herman, a regional medical director for the drug company Pfizer in the Philadelphia area, is a fan of Bracco's work in both guises. He praises "The Sopranos' " portrayal of psychotherapy for its verisimilitude. Herman also saw Bracco play Mrs. Robinson on Broadway last year, pronouncing her performance "phenomenal" (although he adds that the stage version is generally more superficial and less dark than the much-loved film). Herman ticks off Mrs. Robinson's symptoms -- depression, self-medicating with alcohol, acting out by seducing a younger man about the same age as her daughter. "Her behavior is very similar to what we would consider a midlife crisis, maybe trying to recapture her youth and some self-esteem," Herman says. "Dr. Melfi probably would not be terribly judgmental about Mrs. Robinson. In modern times, women being with younger men is almost in vogue, where it was much more risque and out of bounds back then. Melfi might even identify with her. She's divorced, so she had an unsatisfactory relationship, too." Nada L. Stotland is secretary of the American Psychiatric Association in Chicago. She says that Mrs. Robinson would be much less complicated to treat than Tony Soprano, given what a problematic patient the latter is for Dr. Melfi. But she wouldn't necessarily be an easy patient. "Mrs. Robinson is a cold fish, a not very appealing character," Stotland says. "My assumption is that Dr. Melfi, as a good doctor, would rather see people have relationships built more on feelings and mutuality. Her affair with the younger man seems very one-sided, except it's hard for him to turn down for whatever reason. She's not all that old, but she's of another generation." The root of trouble Psychotherapy sessions have always been a key framing device on "The Sopranos," which follows a New Jersey crime ring overseen by patriarch Tony Soprano. As played by James Gandolfini, Soprano is not afraid to get his hands dirty in running the family business. But he suffers recurring bouts of anxiety and depression and reluctantly seeks psychiatric help after a panic attack -- triggered by a family of ducks landing in his backyard swimming pool. "[Dr. Melfi] has a very difficult row to hoe in treating this violent criminal," Stotland says. "Sometimes, therapists won't take people like that because they feel they're abetting bad behavior. But the other side is that if you help someone like that with their psychological conflicts, they might stop their bad behavior. So she tries to help him understand the source of his problem and uses both medicine and psychotherapy. And she wrestles with very human feelings that don't often come up because one seldom has a crime boss in treatment." Would she take on a patient like Tony Soprano? "No, partly out of fear for myself and my family," Stotland says. "Also, I don't think we have an obligation to treat everyone, except in an emergency. This is not a man with an incurable disease. It's a man who kills people who get in his way. It would be one thing if he were to say, 'I want treatment to get out of this life.' But if it's, 'I want to go on being a murderer, but I don't like the anxiety and panic attacks,' I'd have trouble fostering his comfort." Herman says he would try to help a Soprano-like character, but with reservations. While some psychotherapists do have expertise in treating criminals, there's considerable controversy over how effective it is. "Tony Soprano is so sociopathic, you have to question if he can be truly honest enough with himself to make use of therapy," Herman says. "Dr. Melfi adequately treated his panic attacks and depression with medicine, and they got better. What didn't get better was his core personality. That would require a tremendous amount of time and effort to make a dent." But if it's unclear whether psychotherapy could help Tony Soprano, Herman has no reservations at all about what it could do for Mrs. Robinson. "Mrs. Robinson would absolutely be an easier patient than Tony Soprano," Herman says. "She's obviously conflicted, but very intelligent. I think she'd be a really good patient for both psychotherapy and medication and would clearly benefit from therapy." Info What: "The Graduate." When: Tuesday-Jan. 24, 8 p.m.; Jan. 24-25, 2 p.m.; Jan. 25, 7 p.m. Where: Memorial Auditorium, Raleigh. Cost: $16-$66. Call: 831-6060 or Ticketmaster, 834-4000. Actress finds part of herself in Elaine role Saturday, January 03, 2004 By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette For those who wonder what the future holds for Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson, the confused young couple in "The Graduate" at Heinz Hall, you might get a clue from a chat with Devon Sorvari, who plays Elaine. If Elaine is like Sorvari, maybe she can just will the relationship with Benjamin to work.
Devon Sorvari is Elaine to
Jonathan C. Kaplan's Benjamin in "The Graduate." Talking over morning tea in the lobby of the Omni William Penn Hotel, the slim, blond Sorvari appears youthful, crisp and frank -- an upbeat college girl. Having just seen the play the night before (and not liking it much, but that's another story), I noted how much she sounded like Elaine. She admitted that cast members often said the same but set us straight: "No, I think, poor girl, that Elaine sounds like me." Whichever way it works, the casting is spot-on. Sorvari is a few years older than Elaine, but Linda Gray is a lot more years older than Mrs. Robinson, and both make it work. Sorvari is bewildered by people who complain that the play isn't like the movie: "Well, duh?! ... You can't make a play out of that movie, with all those close-ups of Dustin Hoffman sitting there doing nothing." She quotes Peter Lawrence, the director, who "thinks it's a story about two people who save each other's lives." Those two people are Elaine and Benjamin, of course, whether or not that's what Lawrence has told the celebrities who play Mrs. Robinson -- there will have been four on the tour, which began in August and ends in June. Jerry Hall was the first Mrs. Robinson, for three months. Then came Linda Gray for two months, ending here in Pittsburgh. Next week, in Baltimore, Lorraine Bracco steps into the role for 2 1/2 months. Sorvari is looking forward to that: She has found in rehearsals that Bracco is much tougher than the others, and since it's because Elaine has an alcoholic mother that "she can't stand up for herself," she expects to get more of that feeling opposite Bracco. The final Mrs. Robinson will be Kelly McGillis. Sorvari points out that since "Top Gun," McGillis has been working extensively at Washington's Shakespeare Theatre. Compared to Hall, Gray and Bracco, "Kelly's a theater person!" Sorvari figures she was herself headed for theater from the start: "I was just one of those kids. I put on 'Really Rosie" in the back yard when I was 7, and it's said I wouldn't let neighbor kids sing -- they had to lip-sync and I sang for them." She laughs. "I was a lot bolder when I was young." This was in Lexington, Mass., and the more rural Boxboro, where her family had horses until she was 16. Her parents, Ann and John, were an English teacher and scientific researcher, respectively. Sorvari turned pro at 11 in "Brighton Beach Memoirs" with Joyce Van Patten in Stoughton, Mass. Being Equity limited her subsequent outside-school acting to about one show a year. Sorvari's sibling, Jason, is an artist who graduated from Pitt in 2002 and has worked at the Mattress Factory and Carnegie. The Pittsburgh connection is through their grandmother, Alice Burroughs ("the best grandmother in the world -- she couldn't be more supportive"), who has lived in Pittsburgh since the late '60s. There's also an aunt and two cousins in Peters, so Sorvari has visited Pittsburgh over the years. Burroughs points out that Heinz Hall is where she took Sorvari to see her first professional theater when she was 4. New York University was Sorvari's only choice for college. While there, her acting training was at Circle in the Square (two years) and NYU's classical studio ("fantastic"). She graduated in 1997. Since then, there's been a mix of restaurant work, stand-in work on movies ("because there are a lot of blond actresses, if you've noticed. ... It demystified movie making, so I know I can do it") and roles at eight regional theaters, including Juliet (Syracuse Stage) and Ophelia and Hero (Alabama Shakespeare Festival; "we called it Shakespeare camp"). All are, like Elaine, "young girls who get treated badly through no fault of their own." That sparked a debate between the ingenue and the older, somewhat disillusioned critic. "Willfully optimistic," Sorvari calls herself, "with no home, stability or prospects for a stable future, I'm doing this ridiculous thing just because it's what I love." This is her first national tour. "I try to catch the highlights of every city I'm in. I've never not liked anywhere. [After all], you bring yourself everywhere. I like to like things." Like Elaine.
Lorraine Bracco, who plays Tony Soprano's analyst on the HBO series "The Sopranos," will succeed Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson in Broadway's The Graduate on Nov. 19. Turner and Jason Biggs, who had been with The Graduate since its Broadway bow, gave their last performances in the play on Nov. 17, as did Kelly Overton, who replaced Alicia Silverstone in the role of Elaine Robinson. Also joining the cast Nov. 19 are John Lavelle as the new Benjamin Braddock, Andrea Anders as Elaine Robinson, Mark Blum as Mr. Braddock, Colin Stinton as Mr. Robinson, Christopher Coucill as the Hotel Clerk and Psychiatrist and Autumn Dornfeld as the Assistant Desk Clerk. Kate Skinner, Susan Cella, Ben Feldman and John Hillner will continue in the roles of, respectively, Mrs. Braddock, the Stripper, the Bellhop and the Priest. Bracco, a three-time Emmy Award nominee for her role as Dr. Jennifer Melfi on HBO's "Sopranos," will be making her Broadway debut in The Graduate. She is the third "Sopranos" star to currently be seen on the Great White Way, after Edie Falco in Frankie and Johnny and Jamie-Lynn Sigler in Beauty and the Beast. John Lavelle has appeared in productions of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, As You Like It, Cymbeline, Our Country's Good and The Workshop of Resistance. Andrea Anders was a standby in the Broadway production of Proof and was also seen in the original company of Debbie Does Dallas. Mark Blum's numerous Broadway credits include A Thousand Clowns, The Best Man, Lost in Yonkers, My Thing of Love and The Merchant. Colin Stinton appeared in the Broadway productions of The Water Engine, Curse of an Aching Heart and Some Americans Abroad. The Graduate plays The Plymouth Theatre (236 W. 45th Street).
The national tour of The Graduate, the Broadway hit based on the film and book of the same name, will boast no less than four Mrs. Robinsons, including Kelly McGillis and Linda Gray, but it all begins with Jerry Hall Aug. 9. The tour launch at San Francisco's Curran Theatre continues in the City by the Bay with actress-model Hall to Sept. 7, and her tenure in the show lasts to Oct. 26. Her colleagues include Rider Strong as Benjamin and Devon Sorvari as Elaine. Jonathan Kaplan plays the title character later in the run of the tour. Kelly McGillis ("Witness," "Top Gun," "The Accused," and DC's Shakespeare Theatre) is the latest actress announced to play the seductive matron in the Terry Johnson-penned adaptation. With Jonathan Kaplan as Benjamin and Devon Sorvari as Elaine, McGillis is Mrs. Robinson in a handful of cities March 16-June 27, 2004, following stints by Linda Gray (with Kaplan and Sorvari, Nov. 11-Jan. 4, 2004) and Lorraine Bracco (with Kaplan and Sorvari, Jan. 6-March 14, 2004). Bracco, of "The Sopranos," was a replacement Mrs. Robinson in the Broadway run that originally starred Kathleen Turner. Linda Gray is known to fans of TV's "Dallas" as Sue Ellen Ewing. This latter-day play version of the Buck Henry-Mike Nichols film classic originated in London. The tour is directed by Peter Lawrence. Terry Johnson adapted and directed in London and Broadway. Lawrence assisted Johnson on Broadway. The play was an audience favorite on Broadway, though critics were not so friendly. In New York, Jason Biggs played Benjamin (the Dustin Hoffman film role) and Alicia Silverstone was Elaine Robinson.
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