Clearly by now The Graduate is a period piece. Not that the issue of a bored middle-aged woman seducing a callow youth has disappeared (or is every likely to) but the world of post-feminist cougars and Facebook-stalking would require a very different story set today.
The script has stood the test of time and the play is chock-a-block with witticisms and opportunities for stage business. Well-played The Graduate could stand as a classic. Unfortunately, it isn’t well-played. A new Graduate needs to be preserve the humour but revisit the sixties with enough originality to counter the landmark performance of the film’s stars, Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman.
Jerry Hall, the box-office drawcard from the Broadway production, is a model first, a celebrity second and an actor a poor third. She has one devastating expression – a dead pan, bored look which is very funny but does not constitute a character, Âlet alone a character as potentially fabulous and funny as Mrs Robinson. Hall has a vocal range than can be measured in millimetres and none of the warmth or subtlety that the role requires. She looks great and uses her legs to enormous advantage but without the push-pull which is the essence of attraction, I was frankly unconvinced that even a sex-starved college kid would have been seduced by her.
Newcomer Tim Dashwood as young Benjamin Braddock similarly lacked character development. He started the play as an Emo youth, easily flummoxed and dependent on stereotypical nervous gestures, and seemed no different at the end of a narrative which should be a kind of growing up journey.
The other characters are played simply as types so that instead of the wacky transgressive tale that captured the imagination of a generation we are delivered a competent but unremarkable sit-com.
The original Graduate had a surreal feel to it. The stage play is weighed down and stolid, lacking the absurdist edge which made the film so much part of the psychedelic sixties. This failure is most evident in the ending, which lacks ambivalence or humour effectively destroying the final impact of the original.
There are still some very funny moments in this play. The sex scene is particularly well-handled with deft direction giving us hints and humour rather than raunchiness.
The simple set with its opening and shutting louvers is cleverly constructed but it gives us nothing that has not been done many times before.
Sections of Simon and Garfunkel’s great songs so essential to the film are used sparsely, but the music is tokenistic and not well integrated.
As a night of predictable light entertainment, The Graduate was just satisfactory. Disappointed, I wondered if memory had oversold the film so I went home and watched some clips of Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman in the original. They confirmed the sense in this live-theatre lover that on this occasion, I would have been better staying home and watching the video.
Three stars out of five.
