The Rage of ‘Mrs. Cage’ : Anne Bancroft Plays a Woman Who Couldn’t Repress her Anger Anymore

Anne Bancroft believes everyone is capable of rage. Including herself.

“The rage is so repressed,” she said during an interview at husband Mel Brooks’ office at Twentieth-Century Fox. “It doesn’t have to do with women. It doesn’t have to do with age. It doesn’t have to do with upbringing. I think people have more rage than they know. Some people are more in touch with it. Sometimes in life there are episodes that get you in touch with it.”

Bancroft, looking as cool as a cucumber in a stylish pantsuit on a stifling hot afternoon, said: “I have that kind of rage. I see it in myself. I see it in people around me. I just happen to be more in touch with it than other people.”

Rage is the subject of her latest project, “Mrs. Cage,” Wednesday on PBS’ “American Playhouse.”

The drama, adapted by Nancy Barr from her stage play, focuses on a middle-age woman trapped between two generations. Mrs. Cage is the “perfect” wife of a prominent criminal attorney who walks into a police station and confesses to a murder. Hector Elizondo plays the police lieutenant who hears her extraordinary admission.

While shopping for groceries, Mrs. Cage witnesses a young bagboy she is extremely fond of get killed while trying to retrieve the stolen purse of another shopper, an abrasive career woman. The woman gets hysterical, not over the death of the box boy, but over the loss of her purse. Without a thought, Mrs. Cage decides to silence the woman by shooting her with the gun the assailant had left.

The events leading to the parking lot shooting are tracked via flashbacks to Mrs. Cage’s realization that her daily chore of ironing her husband’s shirts has been minimized and unappreciated by her husband.

Ironing the shirts, Bancroft said, made Mrs. Cage feel worthwhile and needed. “Then (her husband) said it doesn’t make any difference to him. It was quite shocking to know what you think is important quite suddenly is just completely unimportant. She doesn’t know how to resume her life once she knows that, but she goes on ironing. She meets the boy around that time and her fantasies about him start to fulfill her. She feels connected and needed. There is this whole life going on (in her mind) about this boy. This boy has no idea; he is just being himself.”

Bancroft sat back in her chair. “Maybe (her husband) gets her off,” she said. “Maybe he wields his magic wand and she is back home ironing again. I don’t think she has any animosity toward (her husband). I don’t think it is anger toward him. It is anger toward life deals, society’s deal.”

Mrs. Cage also is estranged from her daughter, a successful attorney. “The daughter grew up in a different direction than her mother,” Bancroft said. “Most children are these days. Everybody has so much more ambition, especially women. It must be hard for mothers to relate to that.”

Bancroft, 61, said her own mother wanted her to do something special with her life. “I don’t know what my mother sort of expected,” she said with a small smile, pointing out that her mother recognized her talent for acting and encouraged it. “I don’t think she did expect me to be a housewife.”

“Mrs. Cage” is the second television project Bancroft has done this year. She was seen in March in the acclaimed ABC version of playwright Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound.”

Like most actresses, Bancroft, a Tony- and Oscar-winner for “The Miracle Worker” and star of such films as “The Pumpkin Eater,” “The Graduate,” “The Turning Point” and “Torch Song Trilogy,” said it is difficult to find good parts these days. “They are not around,” she said firmly. “They are making movies for children because it is children who go to the movies. Movies are about visual things, about special effects most of the time.”

Married to Brooks for 28 years and the mother of a son, Max, now a college sophomore, Bancroft admitted it has been tough for her to juggle all her careers. “I never said it is easy,” she said. “Children are demanding. It is quite difficult, sometimes very difficult. But you do it.”

Bancroft’s life and career have changed since her only child went off to college. “I realize it is time for him now to learn how to lead his own life and captain his own ship and to break away,” she said. “The less I do for him, the better he will be and the better I will be. So I have to break away. So I have done a few more roles, little things in between the big stuff, just to see what I really want to do in my life.”

One thing she will never do again is direct a movie. She said directing, writing and starring in 1980’s “Fatso” was one of the worst experiences of her life. “I think you should try everything,” Bancroft said. “That is how you learn. You should try to go on the roller coaster and if you throw up, you say, ‘It is not for me.’ So that’s what happened, I tried directing and I threw up.”

And she has no plans to return to the stage. “It’s very, very hard to do theater, maintain family and friends and a warm life,” Bancroft said. “I need a warm life, a nourishing life. I can’t be ready to socialize at 11:30 p.m. when the curtain goes down. I just need to be around my friends on the weekend. It would make my life impossible. I couldn’t possibly be married to this man and see my son and enjoy my friends. It is not for me.”

“Mrs. Cage” airs on “American Playhouse” Wednesday at 9 p.m. on KCET and KPBS.