Perhaps the most confounding part of Broadway’s “The Graduate” is that writer-director Terry Johnson has completely misunderstood–or ignored–what made Mike Nichols’s movie a classic. The film explored two lost generations of the 1960s: young adults (like Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin) disillusioned by their parents’ country-club lives, and middle-aged women (Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson) who had played by the rules and hated themselves for it. The play takes that dynamic–and the older woman/younger man affair that is its highly combustible byproduct–and turns it into a comic soap opera, complete with jokes about oral sex, hippie shrinks and outdated fashion. It’s hard to make a convincing character study of the ’60s when you’re constantly satirizing it. What’s more, the play has somehow made the three main characters completely unsympathetic. Benjamin (Jason Biggs) is a whiny bore. Mrs. Robinson is now so vicious that she attacks her daughter in the name of protecting her. And Elaine (Alicia Silverstone) is a motormouthed airhead. Considering that this is one of Hollywood’s great love triangles, it’s hard to imagine how any of them can stand to be in the same room together.
It seems unfair to blame the actors for not making this more watchable. Still, the play completely overwhelms Silverstone. It may be too easy to say she’s clueless about how to make Elaine more than a cliche, but it happens to be true. Biggs does better operating in Hoffman’s considerable shadow. His Benjamin is more in touch with his inner frat boy than Hoffman, which works fine in the comedic moments. But he and Silverstone have no chemistry, so Ben’s head-over-flippers pursuit of Elaine falls flat. And then there’s Turner. Believe it or not, she’s gorgeous–at 47–in the nude scene. In fact, you can’t keep your eyes off her even when she’s dressed. Her Mrs. Robinson is a bit harder and less cunning than Bancroft’s, but she gives the play far more zing and presence than it rightly deserves. In this “Graduate,” she’s at the head of the class.
The GraduatePlymouth Theater Open
