Though not the disaster most critics have tagged it, this is still a curious production, one that retains some of the classic film's humor but feels utterly divorced from context or meaning, despite the between-scene snippets of `60s pop.
For its first third, The Graduate works as a comedy of embarrassment, with husky Kathleen Turner playing Mrs. Robinson almost like a drag queen, off Jason Biggs's Woody Allenish Ben. But the piece starts going wrong as soon as young Elaine shows up. Alicia Silverstone's goofy-debutante characterization of Mrs. Robinson's naive daughter makes her seem all wrong for selfish, manipulative Ben, and the slapstick showdowns of act two are not exactly fresh or brilliantly farcical.
Contrary to prevailing wisdom, adapting a play out of a classic movie isn't automatically a bad idea; witness The Producers or the underrated On the Waterfront. Nevertheless, when motivations are unclarified, tones shift uncomfortably, and the events depicted have no emotional pull whatsoever, we get nostalgia in a vacuum - a watchable but colorless evening.
