TheatreReviewThe Graduate
Gielgud Theatre, London
Rating: * *

First there was the book by Charles Webb. Then came the famous Mike Nichols movie. Now Terry Johnson, as adapter and director, has attempted to turn this iconic 60s story into a stage show. But it seems an extravagantly pointless affair: stripped of the movie's slick, synthetic glamour, you suddenly glimpse the fragile, anti-intellectual nature of the fable beneath.

By now everyone knows the story of Ben Braddock, the alienated graduate who rebels against middle class mores first by sleeping with the terminally bored Mrs Robinson and then by abducting her daughter. And, even in this version, the opening scenes have a faint erotic frisson.

As Kathleen Turner's Junoesque Mrs R strips to her slip and then to the buff to entice Matthew Rhys's bewildered Ben, she announces, "I'd like you to know I'm available to you." Turner's mocking stillness gives the seduction scene a comic sexiness, as if Mae West were coming on to a panic-stricken Jerry Lewis.

But then everything rapidly goes downhill. Having first portrayed Ben as a virginal nerd, Johnson vainly tries to turn him into a mixture of New England Werther and romantic rebel. In the 60s, we may have bought the idea of Ben as a symbol of youthful defiance. Now - and it is no fault of Rhys's performance - he simply comes across as a graceless wimp who indulges his petty neuroses.

In this version, you do not give a toss about Ben; indeed I kept longing for young Elaine Robinson to reject this loutish Lochinvar and marry her middle class fiance. But that is partly because the best performance of the evening comes from Kelly Reilly as Elaine.

As Turner fades out of the story and Rhys is left trying to find something to act, Reilly establishes Elaine as odd, arresting and strange: a conventional girl who suddenly comes out with weird Holly Golightly remarks such as "I think cab drivers are fallen angels." Reilly even overcomes a dreadful drunk scene with her mother which thankfully was not in the movie.

What we are left with is a thin story about a morose kid who chucks his chances in life and gets away with it. In the movie we accepted it because of Hoffman, the Simon and Garfunkel score and Nichols's glitzy stylishness. Without those magic ingredients, The Graduate simply ends up looking sophomoric.

Until 17 June. Box office 0171-494 5065.

***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKuklrSme5FpZ2lnkaW%2FcHyWaKuhnZGpv6Z6wKurrJ6VlsG2vsSs