Players Centre produces stage version of classic film ‘The Graduate’

Eve Caballero is best known to Sarasota area theatergoers for the countless leading roles she played in major musicals in local community theaters, from “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Guys and Dolls” to Victor/Victoria” and “Hello, Dolly!”

While she has appeared on occasion in non-musicals, like “A Streetcar Named Desire,” she figured she was essentially retired from the stage when her singing voice was no longer what she wanted it to be.

She is not quite done with the stage.

This week, Caballero returns to the Players Centre playing the iconic role of Mrs. Robinson, a bored, jaded seductress in Terry Johnson’s “The Graduate,” a stage version of the 1963 novel by Charles Webb and the script for the 1967 film version by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham.

The role was created on film by Anne Bancroft, who seduced Dustin Hoffman as recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock, who was actually in love with her daughter, Elaine.

It’s a co-production between The Players Centre and Two Chairs Theatre, a company created by director Elliott Raines, and stars relative local stage newcomer Anuj Naidu as Benjamin, James Thaggard and Sue Bachman as his parents, Paul Hutchison as Mr. Robinson and Emma Russell as Elaine.

Caballero said she watched the film to remind herself of the role before auditioning and had to think hard, particularly about the potential nudity that was featured when the play was on Broadway in 2002 with Jason Biggs as Benjamin and Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson. There is no nudity in this production.

But she’s enjoying the experience of working for the first time with Raines, who has his own, clearly plotted way of directing and exploring a new character she wasn’t sure was for her.

“She is a kind of morally bankrupt character. I know acting is acting and you play all kinds of characters, but you devote a lot of yourself to this experience, and I wanted to be sure I was going to be able to like her enough, feel good enough about playing her,” she said. “If everyone would say she’s awful and icky and something of a perv, I didn’t want to do that.”

Caballero eventually came to the conclusion “that this is an adult, sexy comedy, involving consenting adults and I can live with that and I can work with the kind of director that Elliott is and I’m enjoying his process.”

Raines describes it as “an interesting period piece. In my mind, a lot of the immorality has changed radically from (the 1960s) to now, but in certain ways, we’re now going back to that time. It’s almost a full circle occurring with how sexuality is perceived.”

Arts Newsletter: Sign up to receive the latest news on the Sarasota area arts scene every Monday

A home for the future: The Players theater to turn Payne Park Auditorium into shared performing arts venue

The play is about a young man trying to find purpose in his life after graduation. Caballero said the play is “funnier than the movie. Part of that is direction. Elliott is making Benjamin a more nervous and frantic youth rather than Dustin Hoffman, who was more dry.”

A centerpiece of the play is a graduation party, “which should be the best day of his life but is actually the worst,” Raines said. “He’s thinking, ‘Now I have to join the real world. Now what do I do?’ There’s the terror of that coupled with other issues, like losing one’s virginity, a major issue for someone of that age.”

While there are similarities between the film and the play, “this is a different story. I think Terry Johnson managed very well with Buck Henry’s dialogue from the film and kept a lot of it in place.”

‘The Graduate’

By Terry Johnson. Adapted from the book by Charles Webb and the screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Directed by Elliott Raines. Aug. 17-27. Players Center for the Performing Arts, 3501 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, Suite 1130. $28-$30, $13 for students. 941-365-2494; theplayers.org

Follow Jay Handelman on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Contact him at jay.handelman@heraldtribune.com. And please support local journalism by subscribing to the Herald-Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Classic film ‘The Graduate’ comes to stage at Players Centre