The Graduate

Sale NOMADS present Terry Johnson's stage adaptation of the highly successful 1967 film ‘The Graduate’ by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, which itself is based on the novel of the same name by Charles Webb.

It concerns Ben, a young man who has just graduated from college and is struggling to come to terms with his future, worrying that his family expect too much from him, and feels thoroughly disillusioned. However, when the mature Mrs Robinson, a long-time friend of the family seduces him, his boredom takes a new direction.

He later dates with Mrs Robinson's daughter, finally finding some meaning to his life, a meaning that Mrs Robinson opposes!

Ben - played by Daniel Fahey -captures the young, naive and innocent American Graduate. He has some nice moments and gives the audience a few chuckles with his dry and underplayed delivery. Too shy to take charge but too neurotic to keep his mouth shut.

The Director - Barbara Turner - seems aware of the challenges in staging Terry Johnson’s play. I think a danger in the play version is the temptation to use what is iconic from the film. Theatre, of course, can’t showcase the art of the close-up, the cross-fade or any other of the cinematic trickery that made the movie great.  Rightly so, Barbara steers admirably clear of imitation, however, for the fans of the film, the famous one-liners are still in there!

Mrs Robinson – played by Mary Ellis – is undoubtedly the star of this production. Admittedly, it took me the majority of her first scene to eliminate her resemblance of Debbie Reynolds from my mind but once I’d overcome that, I became engrossed with her troubled character which was delivered with all the right levels of humour, depth and sass, congratulations!

The character of Elaine –played by Laura Anderson – is the opposite of her mother, she’s curious, excitable, and eager to learn – and she’s just what Ben needs to seize hold of his own future. If only she weren’t a Robinson!

For me, the highlight of the play was the drunken chat between Mrs Robinson and Elaine. Mary portrays ‘drunk’ very well, we’ve all seen many performances of people acting drunk and it’s difficult to get the right balance of coming across as drunk or someone who’s flopping about a lot and slurring words but Mary hit the nail on the head, she delivered the not so easy technique with believability and just the right amount of humour!

Other notable performances were delivered by Billy Jellyman, the master of the Cameo here, I particularly enjoyed the Priest at the end of act II! Grainne Wiggan as Mrs Braddock demonstrated a more than competent performance as the Graduates Mother.

On a constructive note, American accents (particularly amongst the men) were not always consistent and the stand-up bed against the wall, although making the directors life easier, seemed a little too gimmicky and comical for a play of this nature. Scene changes took a little longer than I like, some of which could easily have been avoided. 

Overall, this was a very enjoyable first visit to the NOMADS club house, I look forward to the Panto in January and thank you for your invite and generous hospitality!

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