Theatre

Here's to the new Mrs Robinson The Graduate Dir: Terry Johnson.Jerry Hall, Josh Cohen, Lucy Punch
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by Robin Stringer

British audiences will soon be seeing more of Amanda Donohoe and not just because she takes over from Jerry Hall next month as the West End's new Mrs Robinson.

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After 11 years as "a resident alien" in Los Angeles, she is thinking seriously of coming home. "I have had a ball but I get less and less tolerant of Hollywood and its sycophancy," she

says. "It's time to move on." She has already sold her LA house, although she retains a rented home there, and might have returned here by now had she been able to bring Sir William of Dog, a 12-year-old Border Collie-Pointer of whom she is inordinately fond.

But Britain's new Passport for Pets arrangement with European countries does not extend to the US, and Sir William would be confined to six months in quarantine - a thought that horrifies her.

Other factors are prompting Miss Donohoe's return, notably the lack of roles for women over 35, a claim she underpinned by quoting a recent Hollywood statistic which showed that 90 per cent of parts written for women are for those under 35.

"I had to come back and do some legitimate theatre because there is no future for me in commercial American films," says Ms Donohoe, who will be starring as Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at Manchester's Royal Exchange theatre at the end of the year.

In the meantime she is getting to grips with "the very sad, terribly trapped, highly sexed" Mrs Robinson in Terry Johnson's hit adaptation of The Graduate at the Gielgud Theatre. "It's such a fabulous opportunity," she says.

"It's witty, it's black, it's one of my favourite films and Anne Bancroft (Mrs Robinson in the movie) is one of my favourite actresses. Few parts written for women over 45 are so dynamic."

In fact Ms Donohoe is still only 38 and looking very trim. But, even though she spent the best part of Nicholas Roeg's 1986 film Castaway naked, she is still nervous about her brief, dimly-lit nude scene in The Graduate.

"I don't know how I will feel until I do it," she says. "No one ever gets used to it. It's always done with slight fear and foreboding because one is so incredibly vulnerable."

Now Playing
Gielgud Theatre Mon-Sat 8pm (Feb 21, 7pm), mats Thu & Sat 3pm, booking to Apr 7 £17.50-£32.50

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