No cum laude for Broadway's 'The Graduate'

NEW YORK, April 17 (UPI) -- Hollywood's "The Graduate" has graduated from the silver screen to Broadway in a disappointingly plodding adaptation of the Charles Webb novel that inspired the popular 1967 film comedy starring Dustin Hoffman.

The play opened at the Plymouth Theater, after a two-year run in London, where it racked up a $10 million profit, and sold-out engagements in Baltimore, Toronto, and Boston. The advance ticket sale at the Plymouth was $5.3 million, the all-time pre-opening record for any straight play in Broadway history.

One of its chief attractions for American audiences seemed to be the chance to see 47-year-old Kathleen Turner, playing a predatory married woman who seduces the 20-year-old high school graduate son of friends, nude for all of half a minute. It turned out to be the biggest theatrical come-on since Nicole Kidman briefly flashed her breasts in the 1998 Broadway production of David Hare's "The Blue Room."

Turner's full frontal exposure is one of the few titillating moments in this less-than-memorable show directed by British director Terry Johnson, whose adaptation of the Webb novel is far clumsier than Calder Willingham and Buck Henry's brilliantly scripted movie adaptation. The Broadway version also lacks the directing finesse given the film by Mike Nichols.

So here you have it - a "Graduate" that lacks a cum laude but is likely to have a lengthy Broadway run without it.

Turner, the only London cast holdover, is probably the chief reason to see the play, since her campy characterization of the seducing Mrs. Robinson is both physically monumental and hypnotically monstrous, fun to experience although never sexy. Her performance also is without the human touch that Anne Bancroft gave Mrs. Robinson, a needy, neglected woman, in the film.

You will come away from the theater remembering Turner's flinty characterization, almost deadpan when she isn't drunkenly angry, but with no recall of the inchoate performances being given by Jason Biggs in the title role of Benjamin Braddock and Alicia Silverstone as Elaine Robinson, Mrs. Robinson's daughter to whom Benjamin is really attracted.

Biggs of "American Pie" film fame is the most opaque leading man seen on Broadway in years, unable to give a convincing personality or even a face to be remembered to his role. He is altogether unbelievable as a disaffected young man seeking freedom from his materialistic parents' empty lifestyle or as a suitor with high testosterone message for a beautiful young woman.

Biggs has boasted that he never watched "The Graduate" movie because he didn't want to be influenced by Hoffman's performance. Maybe he should have.

Silverstone, best known as Cher Horowitz in the film "Clueless," is equally unfocused, giving her role a hysterical, high-pitched, shrill performance that is unintentionally irritating. If her Elaine has any chemistry at all for Benjamin, it is not evident, more likely a flaw in the direction given Silverstone by Johnson than in her dramatic talents.

Supporting roles are well acted by Kate Skinner and Murphy Guyer as Benjamin's well-intentioned parents and by Victor Slezak, who is particularly amusing as Mr. Robinson, a hypocritical know-it-all who advises Benjamin to go into plastics if he wants to make a financial success of himself.

Johnson's direction can best be described as leering, and the final breakfast cereal scene, not in the movie, is unforgivably precious. Rob Howell's scenery, which focuses on beds, seems designed to promote "The Graduate" as a one-joke play, and his costumes - especially Mrs. Robinson's dreary dresses - are less than inspired. Paul Simon songs are used as a musical backdrop, more to evoke the 1960s than anything else.

Now here's the good news: "The Graduate" novelist Charles Webb's seventh novel, "New Cardiff," published to rave reviews earlier this year, is going to be made into a movie under the title "Hope Springs," and he and his ex-wife are collaborating on a screenplay based on their experiences of educating two sons outside the school system.

Sounds like a natural for adaptation as a Broadway play.