Mrs Robinson, by Cathy Marston, for San Francisco Ballet

[Ian Macmillan]

After a long Covid-related delay, San Francisco Ballet is at last able to premiere Cathy Marston's Mrs Robinson in a programme starting on 1 February.  It's based on the 1960s film The Graduate that folk of my age will recall, with Dustin Hoffman as the newly-graduated Benjamin and Anne Bancroft as the predatory friend of his parents.  There's some background here:

 

https://www.sfballet.org/reconsidering-mrs-robinson/

 

And a very sultry trailer here:

 

https://www.sfballet.org/productions/program-1/#mrsrobinson

 

Perhaps Ms Rojo will bring it to London before too long!

[zxDaveM]

terrific trailer - just wondering how they'll get that fountain onstage though...

[bridiem]

I can't say that this is source material I'd be keen to revisit. I enjoyed the film many years ago but would see it with different eyes now (and even then I found all the characters distinctly unlikeable!).

[Jan McNulty]

I really admire Cathy Marston's ability to draw in a character in just a few moves.

 

I've never forgotten her Tale of Two Cities for Northern Ballet where Hiro Takahashi danced Dr Manette.  He'd always been a wonderful dancer but his acting abilities were not his strongest suit.  Well, I wasn't watching Hiro in the prison cell, I was watching Dr Manette.  A glorious memory.

 

I'd love to see this!

[Ian Macmillan]

Fond memories of the First Night of Tale of Two Cities in Leeds many years ago now, when an interview during the Interval resulted in my wife and I featuring in The Times Style supplement some weeks later!  A fearsome phalanx of tricoteuses in Paris, and clerks dancing with their desks in London are in my mind's eye just now.  (Stand-up type desks - on wheels, I imagine, should anyone wonder.)

[Henry]

Ms Rojo as Mrs Robinson and Mr Isaac Hernandez as Benjamin?  

[FionaM]

10 hours ago, Henry said:

Ms Rojo as Mrs Robinson and Mr Isaac Hernandez as Benjamin?  

well that would be a better age difference than the dancers in the trailer!