John Reid and Sacha Brooks
in association with Cambridge Arts Theatre
present
THE GRADUATE
U.K. tour 2003
Yorkshire Evening Post - 'Scene' supplement - Thursday 11th December 2003
with honours
The Graduate
The Alhambra
Until Saturday
OKAY, I am a huge fan of the film - now I'm a much bigger fan of the play. Everyone raves about The Graduate as a comic masterpiece. Starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft as the disillusioned Benjamin Braddock and Mrs Robinson, it is a great film. But one thing I've never understood is why people think it's so funny. Hoffman's good, he's just not very funny.
Andres Williams, taking on the Hoffman role in the West End production of the play, currently at Bradford's Alhambra Theatre, is funny. No, he's hilarious. Williams starts off as a nasally, whiny, pathetic character - you're almost willing his father, brilliantly played as a simmering volcano by Patrick Drury, to administer the beating his spoilt son deserves. But the pathetic whiny-ness suddenly seems to take on an amusing turn. It's difficult to spot when, but not why. It's because Williams has an incredibly sharp sense of comic timing - get that right and everything else becomes funny.
His performance is helped tenfold by the portrayal of his seducer, Mrs. Robinson, who is if anything sharper than Williams's comic timing. Glynis Barber, as Mrs Robinson, is immensely generous in her performance. Leaving no room for vulnerability, Barber
plays a character who is as distant and cold to Benjamin as Everest. Even when they are in bed together. Without quite straying into Morecambe and Wise, it's clear the pair have an innate sense of the straight man/funny man relationship.
Add into this mix the tortured elements of their characters, which are done fantastic justice by writer Terry Johnson and you have a cracking comic drama. At points in the first half of the play, which, no two ways about it, is too long, the action doesn't whip along. But those slow moments make for clever crescendos when the pace is upped and situations explode. Into this charming mix is thrown a beautifully vulnerable performance by Jessica Brooks as Elaine Robinson, again made more poignant when shown against Barber's performance as her mother. The final part of this recipe - the saffron in the curry - is the lighting and sound. Immensely evocative, both are brilliant and brilliantly used.
NICK ANAD
Yorkshire Post Wednesday 10th December, 2003
Bed and bored
The Graduate
Bradford Alhambra
Lynda Murdin
LUCKY old Mrs Robinson, enjoying sexual encounters with a man young enough to be her son.
Mind you, if all of us who've asked Santa to leave a muscle-toned toy boy in our Christmas stockings looked as slinky as Glynis Barber, then perhaps we'd stand more of a chance.
Or so I initially thought on viewing a hotel room's satin sheets undulating amusingly to contortions performed by the two figures beneath.
That occurs during an early scene in this touring version of the West End hit, adapted by playwright Terry Johnson from Charles Webb's novel which also gave rise to the 1968 Oscar-winning movie.
Later, as graduate Benjamin grows more moody, muddled and self-absorbed, you have to ask yourself - who needs it, really?
Silly Benjamin even wants to halt bedroom proceedings to have a conversation. As deadpan Mrs Robinson points out, what do they have to talk about? She calculatedly went out and got what she wanted - the son of her best friends -but now she doesn't seem so lucky after all.
In fact, she probably has a lucky escape when Benjamin falls in love with her daughter, Elaine.
For women in their prime (such as myself) who envy female Hollywood stars' male arm candy, this production at least provides a salutary lesson: count your blessings.
What does it offer everyone else? Entertainment, certainly, but not to the intense degree i'd expected after all the hype about the London production which famously numbered Jerry Hall, Kathleen Turner and Amanda Donohoe among its succession of Mrs. Robinsons. They made headlines by baring their all for a few seconds: Barber made them by not doing so. Had she here divested herself of her black scanties before diving side-ways under the sheets, it might have added an extra frisson.
But I can't see that would compensate for a general sense that - at least on a cold Monday night in Bradford, significantly perhaps the last venue on the tour - matters weren't as sharp and scintillating as they should be.
Sixties' dresses were unzipped but at times the action, directed by Tamara Harvey, hardly zipped along. Nor, incidentally, was the soundtrack, featuring Simon and Garfunkel and some of their contemporaries, as much of a driving force as indicated.
The story involving Benjamin's graduation party, his seduction, his beastliness on an enforced date with Elaine (cue a club's sassy stripper), his change of heart and interruption of her marriage ceremony, unfold chronologically and in surprisingly conventional style.
The style, plus the family arguments (Patrick Drury is in fine furious form as the cuckolded Mr Robinson), sometimes bring to mind works by Tennessee Williams.
So, too, does the design involving louvred doors and shutters, familiar from his plays. But Johnson doesn't reach the same psychological depths, leaving actors to strike postures, a trait compounded by a lack of sexual chemistry among those in the love triangle.
And despite some similarities in Mrs Robinson's situation, she is not like one of Tennessee Williams's heroines, ravaged by time and emotion. She's cool, in control, and here Barber clearly sees no need to lend her any human warmth. Barber looks as chic and svelte as Jackie Kennedy - and just as remote.
Andres Williams, giving Benjamin a permanent frown, plays him as the little-boy-lost with a comical duck-like quack to express surprise. Nothing is his fault, he's the victim of circumstances - until his heart starts to rule other parts of his anatomy.
At the end (a change from the film version) he finally summons up a touching look of love.
Even so - sorry Santa, take back the toy-boy and bring me a man with maturity.
Telegraph and Argus Tuesday 9th December , 2003
Seduced by the spirit of the Sixties
The Graduate
The Alhambra
When 20-year-old Benjamin Braddock is seduced in his bedroom by a middle-aged friend of his parents, his glittering post-college future appears to be very much behind him.
Classic film The Graduate is as much a part of the Sixties as The Beatles, and Terry Johnson's acclaimed stage adaptation has re-invented the funny and moving story for audiences worldwide.
This stylish, witty production - part of the first-ever UK tour - was hugely enjoyable with enough subtle changes to the action, including an uncomfortable, ambiguous climax, make you almost forget the Hoffman and Bancroft version of events.
Andres Williams was superb as Benjamin. He was on stage the whole time, fumbling, nervous, geeky, but at the same time endearing, deeply troubled and trying hard to work his life out.
Jessica Brooks gave a lovely performance as Elaine Robinson, bringing emotional depth and humour to a character often forgotten about.
And Glynis Barber was impressive as cold, ageing alcoholic Mrs Robinson, a woman with no redeeming features.
Much fuss has been made of Barber's refusal to go naked for the tour, but this didn't seem to matter, The humour and drama in the seduction scene rests largely on Benjamin.
The Graduate is moving, sometimes disturbing, but ultimately very funny, and comic highlights included the wedding showdown, featuring a demented Mr Robinson, and the psychiatrist's session, with the Braddock family battling their demons while spread out awkwardly on bean bags.
A simple set, comprising walls made from wooden louvred doors, enabled scenes to be changed seamlessly and effectively. A quick movement of doors and clever use of lighting changed Benjamin's boyish bedroom into a hotel lobby and suite, a bedsit, a church, even the open road.
And snippets of Simon and Garfunkel's haunting score from the classic film, as well as other Sixties songs, introduced scenes, nudging the action along gently without weighing it down.
Emma Clayton
Richmond and Twickenham Times Friday 21st November, 2003
Humorous tale of lust and love
Richmond Theatre
Lucy Oldham
GLYNIS Barber - 47 years old and best known as Makepeace in the 80s TV series 'Dempsey & Makepeace' - shocked audiences with her controversial decision not to appear naked whilst performing in The Graduate.
Playing Mrs Robinson, in its first UK tour, Glynis Barber follows in the footsteps of West End stars such as Kathleen Turner and Jerry Hall but bravely decided that the script did not require taking all her clothes off.
Having seen Jerry Hall's efforts in the West End show and now Glynis Barber's, at Richmond Theatre all this week, I thoroughly applaud her decision.
The play is now watched in its own right, without an off-putting sense of the audience waiting in anticipation for 'the moment' and then anxiously awaiting the end of the play, to discuss 'the moment' in the bar afterwards.
'The Graduate' was written by Terry Johnson, adapted from the original novel by Charles Webb and the motion picture directed by Mike, Nichols in 1967. It is a famous and much-loved story, where 20-year-old Benjamin is seduced by an older woman and then falls in love with her daughter, Elaine Robinson.
The theatre adaptation invites focus on the contrast between Elaine's zest for life and Mrs Robinson's negativity. Glynis Barber is wonderfully sexy as the alcoholic Mrs Robinson but also brings a sense of sadness and defeatism to the role. She constantly reminds the audience that, for all her glamour, Elaine's mother is a pathetic and tragic character.
Andres Williams - a former student at Richmond Drama School - is fantastic as Benjamin and does justice to a very witty script. We are reminded of Dustin Hoffman's screen role, but this would be hard to avoid, after such a memorable performance in a classic film.
It is possible to put the film aside and enjoy the play, despite differences and similarities. Extra material at the end, sees Elaine and Benjamin in a hotel room sharing a box of cereal. Elaine lacks the same seduction powers as her mother, but she offers something more real and fulfilling - a lifetime of having breakfast together.
Try to forget the film, try to forget controversy over nudity and sit back to enjoy a delightful, humorous tale of love and happiness versus lust and cynicism.
Evening Express 8th October, 2003
Seductive staging
SONJA RASMUSSEN saw The Graduate at His Majesty's Theatre
WHEN Terry Johnson adapted The Graduate film script for the stage, he knew exactly what he was doing. The resulting play captures a moment in time, bottles it up and serves it 30 years later in fine vintage form. The stage retelling of the Dustin Hoffman classic, which represents the sexual revolution of the 1960s, is equally captivating for 21st Century audiences.
Staged entirely on a wood-panelled set, with lighting effects and props moving the action neatly from hotel rooms to elevators, churches to bedsits, the story loses nothing in its new home - and enthrals a whole new generation with its charm.
As temptress and seducer Mrs Robinson, Glynis Barber is certainly a force to be reckoned with, her sexy and commanding presence making her a believable icon for the young graduate, Benjamin. Andres Williams is the tortured 21-year-old, lured one way by Mrs Robinson, 20 years his senior. and then by her daughter, Elaine, whose free spirit and lust for life is perfectly conveyed by Jessica Brooks.
Interspersed with the themes of Simon and Garfunkel, moving the action purposefully onwards, this piece of theatre is the perfect match for its film counterpart. You'll be seduced by it all over again.
Catch it at His Majesty's, nightly until Saturday.
The Bath Alternative September 2003
www.thebathalternative.co.uk
Rising to the occasion
The Graduate
Theatre Royal, Bath
The initial reaction of anyone who has seen the film -and is there anyone out there who hasn't?- is that a stage version of the Sixties classic can't work as well.
For a start what about the music, especially the Mrs Robinson theme. Well, there is music, including Mrs Robinson as the curtain falls, but also a lot of great music from groups of the era, Simon and Garfunkel of course, the Beach Boys and The Mamas and The Papas, to name a few.
It's all cunningly interwoven into the plot. There's more of a plot to the play than the film. While much is still in relatively short scenes, like a film, the stage approach somehow allows more time to explore the characters, to see the little tragedies behind the comedy.
And it is a lot of fun. Glynis Barber is the alcoholic seductress of the eponymous graduate, Benjamin Braddock, and how magnificent she is. She's glamorous, sexy, calculating, manipulative, a first class bitch, with perfect comic timing.
Jessica Brooks, as her goody-two-shoes daughter Elaine, with whom Benjamin falls desperately in love, to the incandescent fury of her predatory mother, manages not to be completely overshadowed by Mrs Robinson's powerful presence, and reveals rather more of a character of her own than the film allowed.
Andres Williams is Benjamin, wonderfully gauche, naive and confused. The alleged permissiveness of the Sixties had not yet arrived in Ivy League America but good old fashioned double standards were alive and kicking in the older generation, which is partly what the story is about.
Barbara Drennan gives a wicked caricature of the perfect American housewife, Ben's mother. Her sanitised personality is symbolised by the rubber gloves she constantly wears.
The two self-satisfied fathers are played by Martin Stanbridge (Mr Braddock) and Patrick Drury, who in company with the rest of the cast, create glorious mayhem in the penultimate chapel scene when Benjamin disrupts the wedding.
The set uses screens of louvered doors in a versatile fashion and the production is fast-paced and slick.
It is not the same as the film, but it is as enjoyable. The script is clever and witty and in safe hands with this cast.
It runs until Saturday.
Jo Bayne
Bath Chronicle Tuesday 23rd September , 2003
Glynis Barber is dressed to thrill for The Graduate
The Graduate
Theatre Royal, Bath
WE all know to the very inch how much flesh each famous actress has revealed - or failed to reveal - in the newish stage adaptation of The Graduate. What we haven't really been told in much detail is whether the book that became one of the landmark films of the 1960's, that even today defines how we remember the whole decade, really translates into a meaningful play for the 21st century.
There is, I suppose, a case to be made for leaving us with our memories of the film and all that it stood for, to say that you can't hope to capture what was found on film and so better to leave a legend alone. But I don't think I would make that case.
Forget all the publicity about what actress has or hasn't played the role of Mrs Robinson. Glynis Barber is just about right when she says her seduction scene is erotic enough without taking all her clothes off. And, of course, if you are going to the theatre simply to see someone strip off, there are places to go where you get better value for money.
What we have is a very funny, very, tender and heartwarming story about the time-old problems of growing up.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that young people seeing the play today would probably think that the difficulties of being young and relationships with parents have not been eased much by the intervening 40-odd years.
The Graduate was, and still is, a very funny satire on America's bourgeoisie that thrust the then unknown Dustin Hoffman, playing Ben the graduate, into the limelight. The role here in Bath is played engagingly by Andres Williams.
Miss Barber plays the part of the older woman and friend of his parent who introduces Ben to the delights of adulterous sexual romps in a hotel bedroom one summer.
But then he is introduced to Miss Robinson and Ben discovers the misery of love for the first time.
Whether you are 16 or 60, as they say, you won't be disappointed.
Christopher Hansford
Bucks Free Press Friday 3rd October, 2003
A steamy show
The Graduate
Wycombe Swan
A GREAT deal of fuss has been made over this latest touring stage production of The Graduate and its disappointing lack of full frontals. But the question is - is it a disappointment and I would say no.
Not having seen The Graduate before, on the screen or the stage, I had read with interest the threat by various theatres to shutdown the show if Glynis Barber, the latest Mrs Robinson, refused to bare-all for her public. So I waited with anticipation to see what all the excitement was about and, when the brief episode (forgive the pun) did arise, I could see why the leading lady would object to the ultimatums of various stage managers and national papers. No shocking revelations in this five second scene but still there is shock as you are made to focus on the look of horror on the young Benjamin's face as his parent's oldest friend opens her towel (with her back to the audience) and exposes herself to him. A flash of nipple or any other naughty bits would have just taken away from the dramatic tension of the script. Besides, for the disappointed in the audience there was more than enough raunch in the barely concealed activity going on under the silk sheets a few scenes later and the sexy striptease by a buxom girl in a bar, complete with tassels.
If all this steamy business hasn't yet got you running to the box office to book your ticket, then the high quality of acting in this production should do the trick. Glynis Barber plays an excellent Mrs Robinson - drinking and chain smoking her way from one taboo-breaking situation to another with steely self-assurance but managing to affect a little sympathy from her audience. She is after all rebelling against a loveless marriage and the one man who gives her some attention goes running into the arms of her far more saintly daughter.
But the real star of the night was Andres Williams as Benjamin Braddock who was utterly convincing as the young graduate fighting to find himself in a world smothered by his domineering parents trying to live the quintessential American dream.
A cracking soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel made a great evening even better.
Alice Eaton
THE GRADUATE, KING'S THEATRE, GLASGOW (source missing)
NEIL COOPER
FEW British playwrights understand the legacy of late-twentieth-century pop culture iconography more than Terry Johnson. From the Monroe/Einstein electricity of Insignificance to his more recent Hitchcock Blonde, his works have been a steady catwalk procession of halls-of-residence poster babes, laced with enough irony-free intelligence to transcend any accusations of opportunistic vogueishness.
His stage adaptation of Charles Webb's novel, better known from Mike Nichols's seminal late-1960's movie, is a lovingly constructed affair, which puts enough flesh on the bones of this tale of middle-class, suburban, middle-American lost innocence to see it now as a very obvious portrait of a sozzled society driving itself quietly nuts, with its own laced-up apple-pie conformity and inherent, consumer-led hypocrisy.
Poor Benjamin, the blue-eyed but confused innocent of the title, is caught in those shadow-line years just before the beatnik underground went full-on hippy. The predatory Mrs Robinson, meanwhile, has been locked out of the love-in for too long. Tamara Harvey's new touring version of Johnson's own iconic production is set in a series of closet-strewn rooms, where deep and occasionally meaningful character-building liaisons take place as the sense of personal and cultural claustrophobia is heightened.
Of course, The Graduate has itself become a star vehicle. While Andres Williams's Ben is a tad too Friends, Glynis Barber's only-just-unzipped Mrs Robinson is a slinky study in ice-cool frustration and the barely suppressed rage of the terminally disappointed. If anything, Benjamin represents the first wave of idealistic but dysfunctional baby-boomer Yankee-Doodle liberalism that became that nation's quiet conscience. Of his time he may be, but Johnson's play takes his generation a whole lot further.
Daily Mail (Scotland) Tuesday 16th September 2003
Here's to you, Mrs Robinson, on fleshing out a role in the hey, hey, hey...
The Graduate
(King's Theatre, Glasgow)
WOULD she? Wouldn't she? Well, in the end, she didn't. What was good enough for Kathleen Turner and Jerry Hall was just one step too far for Glynis Barber.
The former Dempsey & Makepeace star - the latest to take on the role of the man-eating Mrs Robinson - disdained to bare all in this now-touring version of the West End hit.
Instead of full-frontal nudity we get, well, a dimly lit scene in which Miss Barber has a towel firmly on her hips and her bare back square to the audience. Erotic or what?
So, no flash bulbs going off all over the auditorium as was the case in the West End when bigger stars than Glynis Barber did the 20-second nuddy scene. Indeed, what we got didn't so much as raise a murmur.
Where the original novel by Charles Webb goes, this particular take on the stage adaptation failed to go.
Not that there wasn't a lot of promise from the handsome Glynis Barber.
Got up in a clinging 1960s Jackie Kennedy-style cocktail dress and stilettos, here was a woman of a certain age who time had treated kindly. Elegant, sexy, insouciant in her cups, this was a Mrs Robinson to turn the head of college graduate Benjamin Braddock (Andres Williams) without much difficulty.
It was odd though, that Miss Barber was reportedly so coy about appearing nude. The much cruder, albeit simulated antics she got up to later in the play with young Mr Williams were positively blush-making, even if they were veiled by satin sheets.
And as for the stripper in the sleazy diner - well, the dirty raincoat brigade won't be disappointed. If you ever wondered about the excessive possibilities of tassels, then book a seat for The Graduate right now.
But what we have here is much more than titillation. Those who know the famous film of this story, which starred Ann Bancroft and a very young Dustin Hoffman, will know The Graduate is a witty take on the mores of Middle America.
This production is a hugely entertaining one that's subtely played so the comedy - and there's a lot of it - is given room to breathe. Barber is a suitably cool Mrs Robinson, and Williams as a comically fumbling Benjamin was a treat.
There were longueurs, however, and the show could easily have been shorter by half an hour.
Best line? Benjamin to Mrs Robinson: 'You are the most attractive of my parents' friends.' Nice friends to get to know, I think.
Until Saturday, September 20, various times. For ticket information telephone 0141 240 1111.
KENNETH SPEIRS
Evening Chronicle Wednesday 10th September, 2003
Show earns a first class degree
AFTER its huge success in New York and the West End of London, Terry Johnson's adaptation of The Graduate began at the Royal last night as part of its first ever UK tour.
As the lights dim and the first chords of Simon and Garfunkel's classic Mrs Robinson begin, anticipation is at fever pitch for a play that promised to be just as good as the novel and film that spawned it.
Young intelligent and a recent graduate at the top of his class, Benjamin Braddock seems to have a bright future ahead of him, and so everyone from his parents to their friends keeps telling him, but the more they do the less he feels like having a future at all.
Like JD Salinger's Holden Caulfield before him, Benjamin is disgusted by his parents' world of grotesques and fakes and wants to experience the real world himself before all his choices are taken away from him.
Benjamin's rebellion takes an unlikely form, however, when a friend of his parents, the lascivious Mrs Robinson, asks him to unzip her dress and turns Benjamin's world upside down.Though from an unlikely source, Benjamin is finally receiving the life experience he wanted but when he falls for Mrs Robinson's beautiful daughter, Elaine, it seems his sexual rebellion is destined to end in disaster.
Terry Johnson's witty script explores the rebellions that occur throughout our lives and relationships, Benjamin's from his domineering parents, Mrs Robinson's from her loveless marriage and Elaine's from her father's expectations. But most of all, Johnson's script is extremely funny, mixing slapstick and farce with biting wit and a parody of 1960s sexual politics.
Producers, John Reid and Sacha Brooks conceived the project with the intention of casting new light on Charles Webb's celebrated novel and Calder Willingham and Buck Henry's classic screenplay, while retaining the atmosphere of both film and book and I am pleased to see that this has been achieved. From the costumes and sets, to the music of Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, The Beach Boys and Harry Nielson, the setting of California in the Sixties is evoked brilliantly by the cast and crew.
Rob Howell's sets, in particular, are stunningly inventive and use the space brilliantly, switching effortlessly between bedrooms, bars, hotel foyers and wedding chapels and working brilliantly with Hugh Vanstone's lighting and the musical score to totally, immerse the audience in the scenes. The cast are all excellent and deliver a host of great comic performances, particularly Martyn Stanbridge as Mr Braddock and Patrick Drury as Mr Robinson but it is Andres Williams, as Benjamin, who steals the show.
When playing a role that Dustin Hoffman made famous it would be easy to slip into caricature and impersonation but Williams really captures the essence of the character and makes the role his own, demonstrating some superb comic timing throughout. As Mrs Robinson, Glynis Barber is everything you would want. Seductive, cynical and yet strangely sad, her slurred, barbarous comments underpinned by a deep sense of loneliness. Barber's decision to avoid the full frontal nudity demonstrated by some of her predecessor's such as Jerry Hall and Amanda Donahoe, that attracted such attention in the media, make no difference to the character or the play and perhaps add to the allure and mystery of the character.
By the time the last of Simon and Garfunkel's Mrs Robinson had faded out and the brilliant cast came out to take their bows, the applause was thunderous and deservedly so. Extremely funny, very sexy and a great adaptation, The Graduate is everything that you would want and more. Highly recommended.
Young reviewer DANIEL THOMSON caught The Graduate at Newcastle's Theatre Royal. It runs until Saturday, tickets on 0870 9055060
Evening Chronicle Monday 9th September, 2003
Flash of brilliance on stage
The Graduate
Theatre Royal, Newcastle, until Saturday
NO boobs on show, just a bare back, may well have disappointed those hoping for a quick flash of Mrs Robinson's flesh. Glynis Barber plays a very modest Mrs Robinson, nipping in and out of bed without so much as a flash of ... well, you know. But a tassel-twisting stripper scene is placed to give the audience its full quota of the female form - expected after the likes of Jerry Hall and Kathleen Turner got down to brass tacks for the part.
The Cambridge Arts Theatre production version of The Graduate is faithful to the original classic 60's film, save a scene or two.
A young college graduate, Benjamin Braddock is seduced by the alcoholic married friend of his parents, Mrs Robinson. They begin a torrid affair before he is set up by his parents with her daughter, Elaine Robinson, which throws a real spanner in the works.
Plenty of preppy clothes, teen angst, excerpts of that excellent soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel, and all the characters left more or less intact means it transfers to stage pretty well. Glynis Barber, of Dempsey and Makepeace and Night and Day fame, visually is the perfect, but unsympathetic, Mrs Robinson. Beautiful in a cold, distant way, she is adolescent fantasy fodder made real and dives in and out of clothes quicker than she can down a vodka bottle.
Andres Williams is a seasoned pro in the part of Benjamin Braddock having played opposite Amanda Donohoe and Anne Archer. But he is too college preppy without the sex appeal Dustin Hoffman had in the original. Elaine Robinson is excellently acted by Jessica Brooks, better known as the wild child daughter of the Sven Goran Eriksson character in Footballers' Wives. In this, she is more angel than Aerosmith with a perfect mix of innocence and enthusiasm.
The Graduate stageplay is not much different from the film, which is where some of the problems lie for fans of the original. This production does not bring much new to the film but, for those who haven't seen it, it is an excellently-acted, well-directed play.
Hannah Davies
icnewcastle.co.uk September 9th 2003
Theatre and Arts
Graduate grows up - but never dates
by David Whetstone, The Journal
The Graduate at Newcastle Theatre Royal until Saturday
Naive youth versus smug and cynical middle age makes for a funny and feisty opener to the Royal's autumn season.
Top student Benjamin Braddock stands on the verge of glittering adulthood - or so he is told by his stiflingly middle class parents and their friends.
Trouble is, he doesn't feel glittery. Doesn't know what he wants. Then in prowls Mrs Robinson - Glynis Barber, lean and predatory - and decides for him.
Mr Robinson advised "plastics" as the future for young Ben. But his wife, driven to extra-marital kicks and alcohol, soon has him in a hotel bedroom, blushing and fumbling. Barber and Andres Williams, a seasoned Benjamin having played opposite two previous Mrs Robinsons, milk the bedroom scenes - shocking in the 1960s - for 21st Century guffaws.
Then Benjamin announces he has to date Mrs Robinson's daughter, Elaine, "almost young enough to be my own age".
It's a dash from a contemptuous date in a strip joint to the church and Mr Robinson smashing at a vestry door with an axe.
But it fizzes with acid humour and those social moments from hell - such fun when it's not you.
The Daily Telegraph Friday 5th September 2003
arts.telegraph.co.uk
Theatre
The Graduate
CAMBRIDGE ARTS THEATRE; TOURING
FROM the moment it opened in the West End in April 2000 to its closure in January 2002, having scooped £10m at the box office, it was fashionable to deride Terry Johnson's stage adaptation of The Graduate. No self-respecting cultural connoisseur could admit to being smitten with a show so brazenly indebted to a celluloid classic or so commercially dependent on its leading lady baring her all.
A few weeks ago, Glynis Barber, the first Mrs Robinson in the production's new touring incarnation, surprised everyone by digging her heels in and refusing to strip for the play's notorious seduction scene. There was a no-nudity clause in her contract and Barber, renowned as the classy Makepeace in the hit 1980s detective series Dempsey and Makepeace, was sticking to it.
Anyone who bought the line that The Graduate's primary appeal resided in 15 seconds of shadowy titillation would have concluded that the regions were being robbed; and, by copping out of getting her kit off, Barber would surely be leaving the unremarkable essence of the stage version embarrassingly exposed.
In fact, Barber's brave decision does The Graduate a huge favour, because it proves that the evening's pleasures remain intact, if not shift into sharper relief, when Mrs R's come-on to the virginal Benjamin is left rather more to our imagination.
We're not entirely bereft of sensual suggestion: her back to the audience, Barber's outwardly composed, inwardly wrecked 1960's housewife allows a bath-towel to tumble as far down as her waist, as she entices the aghast 20-year-old with the purring promise "I'm available".
But, instead of that scene having the air of a premature dramatic climax, it now takes its place as just one in a succession of wonderful, squirm-inducing moments. Johnson spins gag after gag from Charles Webb's original novel, but the humour is deceptive, hooking the heart with its sad insights into growing up and getting on.
Barber easily stands comparison with the best incumbents in the role to-date - Kathleen Turner and Amanda Donahoe - but mention must again be made of Andres Williams's superb Benjamin, as nasal in his neurosis as Dustin Hoffman in the 1967 film, but possessed of his own particular peachy, bright-eyed charm. There's great support, too, from newcomer Jessica Brooks as Elaine and Barbara Drennan as Benjamin's over-anxious mother. Cambridge, that conglomeration of overachievers, is the apt starting point for this welcome replay of Johnson's first-class homage to one of cinema's finest hours, and to youth's most restive days.
Until Sat. Tickets: 01223 503333
Dominic Cavendish
Cambridge Evening News Thursday 28th August 2003
Tale of seduction is shocking and funny
The West End smash hit comedy The Graduate came up to Cambridge fast night for the opening of its first UK tour. SUREKA FERNANDO went to take a look.
A CLASSIC script, excellent comic timing and above all, a first-rate cast made this award-winning production gripping from start to finish.
From the moment Glynis Barber made her sultry, commanding entrance, it was clear she embodied the role of Mrs Robinson.
In her inebriated, husky drawl she made her far from respectable intentions painfully clear to a blubbering, abashed Benjamin (Andres Williams), shivering in his underwear in the opening scene.
The suffocating intimacy and grandeur of the Braddocks' family home set the scene for this coming-of-age comedy.
Twenty-year-old Benjamin Braddock has graduated with flying colours but soon finds himself helping the older Mrs Robinson with her zipper and kissing goodbye to a promising future. Glynis Barber was effortlessly sexy and assured as Mrs Robinson and Andres Williams played Benjamin's reckless rebelliousness to perfection.
The famous seduction scene was surprisingly understated but nevertheless satisfyingly shocking and funny.
Richly atmospheric songs from the 1960s evoked an era of awakening consciousness and rebellion without intruding upon the action itself.
The excellent leads were supported by a fantastic cast, notably Benjamin's mother, played by Barbara Drennan with comic neurosis, and Jessica Brooks' portrayal of Elaine - the long-suffering daughter of Mrs Robinson - performed with an intelligent blend of childish naivety and maturity.
The shocking rebellion of Benjamin sparks a hilarious enforced visit to a psychiatrist played brilliantly by Alan Barnes.
And when Benjamin finally leaves Mrs Robinson in favour of her altogether more wholesome daughter Elaine, the action comically moves to a seedy bar, with an ingenious stripper played by Julie McKenna, where Benjamin has farcically decided to take Elaine on a date.
This fast-paced comedy, packed with witty one-liners and hilarious characters was quite simply perfect. There were roars of laughter from the packed auditorium.
The Graduate is showing at Cambridge Arts Theatre until Saturday, September 6. Tickets priced between £5 and £25 are available from the box office on (01223) 503333.
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latest revision in this section:-
Friday 4th March 2005
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