CityLife

The Graduate

The Graduate
Buxton Opera House
March 24, 2010

To undertake a touring stage version of the iconic Oscar-award winning movie, famously starring Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman, is brave, or foolhardy, even for the MEN Award-winning Tabs Productions.

In the event, it proves to be the former, in the experienced hands of Tabs’ co-founders, Adrian Lloyd-James, director, and Karen Henson, as Mrs Robinson. And the adaptation is by the multi-award winning writer Terry Johnson.

So, forget the film for a couple of hours, if you can (not easy), and what you get is a compressed, pacy, if patchy, production, with one set serving for a dozen locations by simply moving the furniture. What this does is to focus attention on the situation, the relationships and the text, which has more funny lines than I had remembered, without distraction. But for all its achievement, the production underplays the inherent pathos of the play.

In the title role of Benjamin, who comes home from college disillusioned with the material world of his parents and their cocktail-party friends – and gets himself seduced by Mrs Robinson, breaking all the rules – Grant Orviss gives an exceptional performance. He captures all the nuances of Ben’s development, from lust to love, reminiscent, I’m bound to say, of Dustin Hoffman in the part (no, it’s not easy to forget the movie).

In a strong cast, Karen Henson is a sexy, shapely and bitter, rather than sophisticated Mrs R. The casting of  John Hester, as her hopeless husband, and Michael Sherwin, as Ben’s  blustering dad, is well judged, not least because they physically tower over Ben, emphasising his feeling of being overwhelmed. 

Charles Webb wrote the novel on which the movie was based in 1962, fresh from college, aged 23.  He sold the film rights for £14,000, missing out on a share of the £60 million grossed by the 1967 film.

I am indebted to the programme note for the information that he now lives quietly in Brighton, Sussex, and “regards The Graduate as an albatross, a curse which has haunted him throughout his life”. He has recently completed a sequel, a 130-page novella, Home School, but he won’t let it be published as long as he lives. 

Until Saturday. Tkts £12-£17. Concs available. Tel: 0845 127 2190. www.buxtonoperahouse.org.uk.

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