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The Graduate: at Maidment Theatre

24.02.2003 By PETER CALDER

Reinventing a classic is a dangerous game. It's a marketing dream - this stage version of The Graduate has a ready-made audience in the generation for whom the 1967 film was a cultural high-water mark - but it makes for a show which inevitably arrives freighted with old baggage.

That movie (written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingham from Charles Webb's 1963 novel) was about a Mrs Robinson who was an emotional black hole, threatening to swallow up the title's Benjamin. He escaped her with a grandly romantic gesture which was, in dramatic and emotional terms, deeply satisfying.

This play, by Englishman Terry Johnson, has little, if any, of that coherence. It's a sort of romantic slapstick, a series of vignettes which has an unerring feel for the story's funny bone but stays well clear of its dark heart.

The playing for laughs makes for some strange moments. The cuckolded Mr Robinson cuts a slightly tragic, rather than oafish, figure as he seeks an explanation from Ben; the moment has an emotional weight missing from the rest of the evening. And I found quite inexplicable a drinking scene between Elaine and her mother which occurs just after the secret is out.

As she's reading, she says, she starts seeing images of how the characters might look. Those ideas are fed from the hundreds of images that she's surrounded by.

But if the text is slightly misshapen, this production is a sleek and gleaming thing that roars along with the grace of a V8. It abounds in remembered moments - the exhalation of smoke after that long first kiss and lines such as "You're the most attractive of all my parents' friends" were almost cheered on opening night - and virtually every scene was wildly applauded. The excellent cast maintained a perfect pace and pitch throughout. Jennifer Ward-Lealand as Ben's surrealistically neurotic mother was a standout, and Jim McLarty as her husband stepped smoothly into what was apparently an understudied role.

And here's to you, Mrs Robinson. Much of the play's reputation in the northern hemisphere has rested on the frisson of seeing stars in the nude, but Elizabeth Hawthorne's brief streak in the buff was demurely underlit. It was a useful reminder that this is an actress' role and Hawthorne devours it lipsmackingly and with just the right touch of self-mockery.

Paul Ellis' agile Benjamin keeps up well - the pair brought the house down in a fabulously choreographed bedroom sequence which depicted the progress of their dangerous liaison - but the show's devil certainly had the best lines.

In short, it's an extraordinarily entertaining night and a fitting farewell for the company's (and the production's) director, Simon Prast.

The city owes him much and we should all wish him well.