The Way of All Flesh

It is amazing the amount of publicity a little display of flesh can generate. Two years ago, Nicole Kidman briefly bared all to make The Blue Room an international must-see. Now another Hollywood diva, Kathleen Turner, disrobes for Terry Johnson's stage adaptation of The Graduate at London's Gielgud Theater, and the headlines are full of this apparently remarkable occurrence. The real news, however, is bad news. Ms. Turner's London stage debut is a disaster.

Not in financial terms, certainly. Since the nudity story broke the Gielgud's box office has been besieged--almost $150,000 worth of tickets were sold in one 24-hour period (a statistic that won't harm the show's producers in their intention to take the $630,000 production to Broadway). No, the problems are all artistic. And, particularly for fans of the famous 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman, that is a crying shame.

All the more so because, speaking to TIME shortly before press night, Kathleen Turner could barely conceal her excitement: "I've been doing theater regularly throughout my career, but this role is special." Turner plays Mrs. Robinson, the bored "older woman" who seduces Benjamin, her best friend's son.

It is a part which should suit her down to the ground. Ever since her scorching femme fatale in the 1981 movie Body Heat, Turner's sexual charisma has been widely admired. This is, don't forget, the woman who once declared, "If there is a man who doesn't look at me, it's because he's gay." And she sees Mrs. Robinson as almost the flip side of this powerful temptress image. "Sex is the only power she has left," says Turner. "In those days, when women were expected not to do very much, it must have been so frustrating, sex appeal is the only weapon she has to try and broaden her life. At the same time, it's damaging her, because what she does is humiliating."

Although this is not Turner's first flash on a British stage, she confesses to feeling nervous: "It is a risk. Terry Johnson left it up to me. As we got further into rehearsals it seemed to fit. It's a sensational moment--at the first preview I heard a lovely gasp from the audience."

Director and adapter Johnson, who has drawn both from Charles Webb's screenplay and his original novel, is an award-winning playwright himself, and once again the match seems perfect. His own plays, including Dead Funny and Hysteria, exhibit exactly the tense mixture of humor and sadness that underscore The Graduate. In the book even more than the film, Webb's plot is about far more than the tale of a young man's sexual affair; it is the '60s youth rebellion against the strict social conformity that older generations expected. Sadly, Johnson has settled for a sedate domestic comedy.

The opening tableau promises much. Matthew Rhys as Benjamin sits dejectedly in his bedroom wearing his graduation present, a scuba outfit. Dappled blue light swirls around Rob Howell's set, giving the impression that Ben is already underwater, and he is drowning. It is a clever touch, but soon dispelled, for thereafter Johnson never gives the sense of the social pressures against which Ben must struggle.

In the first scene of the movie, for instance, Dustin Hoffman's Ben is swamped by oppressive friends of the family who have already mapped his future. Here, Rhys stays in the bedroom, a couple of guests pop their heads around the door, and that's it. There is none of the cold, hard resolve that Webb's anti-hero clings to as the only way he can retain his individuality.

So Johnson fumbles all the big moments by making them smaller. When Webb's Benjamin reveals the truth to Mrs. Robinson's daughter Elaine, it is a desperate attempt to subvert the last power she holds over him, although he risks losing Elaine's affections. Johnson has the secret slip out by accident, after which mother and daughter get drunk and drone on about dolls and childhood. A brave act is thus reduced to sentimental slush.

The one moment which still works is when Mrs. Robinson offers herself to Benjamin. Kathleen Turner seizes her big moment with aplomb. Eyeing Rhys with arrogance and contempt, she throws off her robe as though issuing a challenge to his manhood. However, in a one-note performance, she never suggests the character's self-loathing, only her boredom. Kelly Reilly's Elaine is whiny and irritating.

The book, published in 1963, and then the movie caught precisely the fiery volatility of that decade: the frustration that lit a rocket under American youth and led to the explosion of Flower Power and the hippie movement. Johnson misses the menace, the danger. "Hello darkness," sing Simon and Garfunkel at the start of the movie. Terry Johnson should have realized the edgy truth of that opener.