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Gielgud Theatre: Previewed 24 March, Opened 5 April 2000, Closed 19 January 2002

Play by Terry Johnson, adapted from Charles Webb's novel and Calder Willingham and Buck Henry's movie screenplay. Directed by Terry Johnson. Designed by Rob Howell with lighting by Hugh Vanstone and sound by Mike Walker

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California in the Sixties.... Benjamin's got excellent grades, very pround parents and, since he helped Mrs Robinson with her zipper, a fine future behind him... A cult novel, a classic film, a quintessential hit of the Sixties, now Benjamin's disastrous sexual odyssey is brought vividly to life in this world stage premiere production.

Cast from 1 October 2001: Linda Gray as 'Mrs Robinson'.

Linda Gray is making her West End debut in The Graduate. An award-winning television, stage and film actress, an accomplished director and a United Nations Ambassador, Linda Gray is one of the world's most recognised and admired stars. Her performance as 'Sue Ellen Ewing' in the legendary television series Dallas won her an Emmy nomination and numerous international awards. After eleven continuous years in production, Dallas is still broadcast across the world.

The Graduate is a play by Terry Johnson, adapted from the original novel by Charles Webb and the motion picture screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. The award-winning 1967 film, directed by Mike Nichols, starred Anne Bancroft as 'Mrs Robinson', Dustin Hoffman as 'Benjamin' and Katharine Ross as 'Elaine Robinson'. The film received seven Oscar nominations.

Terry Johnson directed the West End production of The Memory of Water and has written the plays Dead Funny, Hysteria and Cleo Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick.

News about the show

On 13 June 2000 It was announced that Jerry Hall will take over the role of 'Mrs Robinson' from Kathleen Turner from 31 July 2000.

On 26 June 2000 Booking opened for performances from 31 July 2000 to 21 October 2000 - Jerry Hall will play the role of 'Mrs Robinson' from 31 July 2000 - the 'first night' will be on 8 August 2000.

On 4 September 2000 It was announced by the producers that a new booking period, covering performances up to 10 February 2001 is expected to open by mid-September. Jerry Hall is expected to continue to star.

On 17 December 2000: An extension is expected to be announced with Amanda Donohoe taking over the lead role from 12 February 2001.

On 18 December 2000: It was confirmed today that Amanda Donohoe will take over the lead role of 'Mrs Robinson' from 12 February 2001. She will be playing a strictly limited eight week season. Jerry Hall, who is curently playing 'Mrs Robinson' will be leaving the show on 10 February 2001. A new eight week booking period - 12 February to 7 April 2001 - has also been announced, tickets for these performances are expected to go on sale within the next couple of days. It was also announced that since opening on 24 March 2000, The Graduate has been seen by over 212,000 theatregoers, taking a record breaking £5.8 million at the Box Office. Amanda Donohoe was last seen on the West End stage in 1997 playing 'Mrs Simpson' opposite Corin Redgrave's 'Edward VIII' in HRH. She recently made her Broadway debut opposite Derek Jacobi in Uncle Vanya for which she won a Critics Circle Award nomination for 'Best Broadway Debut by an Actress'. Her films include Castaway (opposite Olivier Reed), The Madness of King George, Liar Liar with Jim Carrey and One Night Stand with Wesley Snipes. On TV she appeared in two series of LA Law for which she won a Golden Globe Award.

On 13 March 2001: A new two month booking period covering performances from 9 April to 9 June 2001 was announced. Amanda Donohoe will continue to start in the lead role of 'Mrs Robinson'.

On 14 May 2001: It has been confirmed that the American actress Anne Archer will take over the lead role of 'Mrs Robinson' from 11 June 2001. This will be her London stage debut. A new booking period up to 29 September 2001 has also been announced. Golden Globe winner and Oscar' nominee Anne Archer is well known from her numerous starring roles in a wide range of films, in particular her starring role opposite Michael Douglas and Glenn Close in Adrian Lyne¹s critically acclaimed and internationally successful movie Fatal Attraction. Her other starring roles have included Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games, both opposite Harrison Ford, Robert Altman¹s Short Cuts with Tim Robbins and Julianne Moore, Body of Evidence with Madonna and Willem Dafoe and Rules of Engagement with Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones. She has made several acclaimed stage appearances in the U.S. including Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Poison Tree and A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking (which marked her New York stage debut).

On 29 August 2001: It was announced that Linda Gray will take over the role of 'Mrs Robinson' from 1 October 2001. She is perhaps best known for playing the role of 'Sue Ellen' in the television series Dallas. A new four month booking period up to 2 February 2002 was also been announced.

On 6 November 2001: It was officially announced that The Graduate will close on 19 January 2002 after a run of 22 months, and two weeks short of its current booking period.
While the production garnered much publicity for the brief nude scene required from the actresses that played 'Mrs Robinson', the critics noted that the scene was played out in the shadows and with the light behind - so it was perhaps appropriate that the only nomination the production received at the Olivier Awards was for 'Best Lighting Designer' for Hugh Vanstone!
Kathleen Turned is expected to reprise her role as 'Mrs Robinson' in the North American tour which starts in January 2002, prior to an expected Broadway opening in April 2002.
Subject to final confirmation, the next production at the Gielgud Theatre is expected to be a transfer from the National Theatre of Humble Boy from 24 January 2001.

Extracts from the reviews:

From the third cast: Amanda Donohoe as 'Mrs Robinson' and Andres Williams as 'Benjamin':

"...[Amanda Donohoe's] performance as a whole is as perfect as you could wish. In re-establishing herself as a stage actress over here after spending the past 11 years in Los Angeles, Donohoe also restores credibility to a production that was tarnished by Hall's amateur theatricals. Although a good five years younger than either of her predecessors, Donohoe captures even more successfully than Turner the mixture of world-weariness and sexual restlessness that afflicts this trapped Sixties housewife, driven to drink by boredom. Sleekly feline, Mrs R Mark III has all the poise, composure and allure necessary to arouse and terrify the virginal Benjamin, her neighbours' 20-year-old son. But there is also a desolate wistfulness - her fling has come too late to give her any satisfaction. Perhaps the biggest compliment that one can pay Donohoe is that she doesn't try to steal the show... With able supporting performances - particularly from Coral Beed as Elaine Robinson - the production shakes Johnson's mildly intoxicating cocktail of sex comedy and domestic calamity into something worth quaffing." The Daily Telegraph

"...Donohoe turns in a stylishly amusing performance as the woman who has substituted boredom and alcohol for maturity. Her voice combines languor with a ball-breaking grit, as she transforms from drunken seducer to tigress on the rampage... Andres Williams is especially effective as the Dustin Hoffman character, Benjamin Braddock... As Elaine, Coral Beed takes time to warm up, but in the play's second half she turns in some storming displays of outrage and indignant flirtation. Stuart Milligan's Mr Robinson is at his eccentric best at the wedding: his mouth distorts into a triangle of anger, and as he brandishes the axe his eyebrows take on the aspect of a madman. Alex Giannini and Lolly Susi complete a strong cast, with their earnest-as-American apple-pie portrayals of Benjamin's parents. The Graduate has graduated to being a good night out again." The London Evening Standard

"...Perhaps it will come as a surprise to learn that the play itself is pretty good. Pretty to look at too. Witty, and with its present cast at least, attractively acted. Donohoe's Mrs Robinson, the blonde bitch-goddess consumed with contempt for everyone she encounters, makes her first entrance in a stunning dress of deep-water blue. She sits on the bed, still, poised, upright, exquisitely assured. In her own house she even manages to sit with dignity on a large floor cushion modelled on a frosted doughnut... Andres Williams is an engagingly polite and naive Ben, husky-voiced, dumb even when speaking, though it is still hard to be persuaded that any young man could graduate and remain quite so ignorant of social customs. Coral Beed makes an accomplished West End debut as daughter Elaine, innocent, outraged, and managing to suggest that if Ben proves disappointing she might easily turn into her mother. Some scenes taken from the film, eg, the diving-suit entrance, fail to work but Johnson's own inventions are clever, and his precise direction ensures an evening of enjoyable emotional voyeurism." The Times

"Men of a certain age get Art; women get The Graduate. While the men tussle in a vaguely intellectual fashion over a white painting, the women fall out of a white towel and into white satin sheets. The West End is the land that time and feminism forgot, and The Graduate is its calling card, an appallingly conservative, thoroughly tedious male fantasy of lust sated and love gained. At least the object of lust is once again an actress, not a model, but you wouldn't know it from Amanda Donohoe's monochrome performance... To Donohoe's credit, the play leaves no room for manoeuvre - it is populated by caricatures stuck in a groove. No matter how spirited Andres Williams's performance, his sulky sop Benjamin remains a whingeing ninny, not even happy when he gets his girl. Coral Beed has moments of real emotion as Elaine, and almost hints at character development, but she too ends the play as sappy as ever." The Guardian

From the second cast: Jerry Hall as 'Mrs Robinson', Josh Cohen as 'Benjamin' and Lucy Punch as 'Elaine' along with Amanda Boxer, Alex Giannini, Colin Stinton, Alan Barnes, Coral Beed, Julie McKenna, Christine St John, Geoffrey Towers and Andres Williams:

"...In many ways Hall is fine. She is cool, suave, languid, elegant, charismatic and bored without being boring: which is all that Mrs Robinson, alcoholic victim of suburbia and a bad marriage, should be when she lures Benjamin Braddock into wordless encounters in a hotel. Hall is less admirable when more is demanded of her. Told by her lover she disgusts him, she barely raises an eyebrow, let alone an involuntary grimace. Exposed by him to her daughter Elaine, she under-reacts again. But then so did Turner before her. When Anne Bancroft came to this moment in the original film, her face fell and cracked open, and she suddenly looked distraught, broken, helpless, old. Such self-exposure is beyond Hall, as, more surprisingly, it proved beyond Turner. As is often the case when productions are recast, standards have slipped. Matthew Rhys's Ben was an energetic period rebel: Josh Cohen is more earnest and morose and, frankly, duller. Lucy Punch is so busy comically signalling that Elaine is a ditsy co-ed she misses any poignancy... When I reviewed this Graduate in March, I said it was diverting and sometimes funny; I suppose it still is. But does it finally amount to much more than a dated variation on that 1960s subject, the need to resist pushy fathers and find your true self? Is it still with us for any reasons other than that it offers the chance to gawp at a famous body? I don't think so." The Times

"...Jerry, I'm afraid, is no actress. But she's got great legs and she brings to the role the deportment and poise of a top class model. You may see the wheels go round when she's saying her lines but, boy, she wears her clothes like a pro. Anyway, does it really matter if she isn't exactly Vanessa Redgrave? The play is never really more than a slim bit of fun watchable Sixties twaddle which nostalgically echoes a much-loved film of an obscure book here adapted and directed by Terry Johnson. The two new members, though, are terrific. Josh Cohen as Benjamin Braddock, the graduate on a crash course of sexual education, is wonderfully hangdog. And Lucy Punch makes a bold and brilliant West End debut of real clout as Elaine, Mrs Robinson's damaged-goods daughter..." The Express

"... Jerry may be no more an actress than she was 12 years ago in Bus Stop, in which she managed to make the Marilyn Monroe chanteuse look like a stricken willow tree. Here, though, she looks like a tragic, isolated Venus. She bargains a beautifully poised decorum against the inner demands of Mrs Robinson so devastatingly illustrated by Anne Bancroft in the film and, four months ago, Kathleen Turner in this stage premiere. Her acting performance, while not bad, goes nowhere, but it is more than compensated for by the energy radiating from newcomer Lucy Punch, who is stunning as her daughter Elaine. They meet and link arms in vacuous desperation. Elaine's hair grows into that of her mother, blonde and swishy. The amazing thing about Miss Hall is that she retains her glamour and style while exposing Mrs Robinson as a waste of space. She wears beautiful dresses of blue, and then gold, satin, and her grey silk lingerie, edged with black, is more of an eyeful than her emaciated rib-cage... Josh Cohen's is another notable performance in a show which is far from disastrous, more like a surprise and a success." The Daily Mail

"...Although [Jerry Hall's] performance is somewhat stiff and inexpressive, betraying her inexperience, you could argue that this is in keeping with her character, the alcoholic Mrs Robinson - emotionally burned out and on the prowl for meaningless, mechanical sex. Unfortunately, the other central performances in this re-cast production are also fatally underpowered. Josh Cohen makes Benjamin - played by Dustin Hoffman as essentially void in the movie - a warmer, more sympathetic figure; he lends an attractive bathos to some of the comic dialogue, and makes the play's upbeat ending seem plausible: where the film ended with Ben and Elaine, just eloped, subsiding into uncertainty on the back seat of the bus, the play leaves them having fun in a motel room, suggesting at least a possibility of happiness... It doesn't help that Lucy Punch's Elaine is little more than a bundle of preppy tics. As a result, several key scenes are short of any emotional intensity... There are good lines, and persuasive performances from Alex Giannini as Ben's father and Colin Stinton as Mr Robinson. But overall, the play has been overshadowed by the movie and the media circus; by itself, the play is no reason for going to the Gielgud." The Financial Times

From the original cast: Kathleen Turner as 'Mrs Robinson', Matthew Rhys as 'Benjamin' and Kelly Reilly as 'Elaine Robinson' along with Amanda Boxer, Paul Jesson, Colin Stinton, Alan Barnes and Josh Cohen

"Guess what? The stage play of The Graduate is better drama than the movie. Which is not to say that it is so enjoyable or so important. The movie of The Graduate is more than just a movie: it's an icon. Like the film of Cabaret, it is a rite of passage: you want every adolescent you care for to have seen it as part of the process of growing up. The play of The Graduate (adapted and directed by Terry Johnson) is, well, just a play. But a good play, and a clever one. Like the movie, it is, of course, primarily an adaptation of the novel by Charles Webb. It starts out as like the movie... and it stays like the movie for so much of Act One that the resemblance begins to disappoint. True, Kathleen Turner takes her kit off (but with the light behind her); and, true, Matthew Rhys is plenty hunkier than Dustin Hoffman; and true, the play fills you in on the nature of the sexual education Benjamin receives from Mrs Robinson... You're just starting to think, "Well, I could have stayed home and watched the video" when the play starts to go elsewhere. The last two scenes aren't in the movie at all. Sure, you can't help missing the classic scene when Benjamin beats on the window at Elaine's wedding, and when you see the hatred like a gash across Mrs Robinson's face. But the final scenes in the play are awfully satisfying, and full of very canny suspense. The play keeps asking - as the film does not - will Benjamin and Elaine really make a go of it together? And when it ends - like a sentimental comedy - it leaves you far wiser about Elaine... [Kathleen Turner] makes a more naturally seductive alcoholic than Anne Bancroft. This role proves how authoritative a stage animal she is, and how deft a comedienne... Matthew Rhys and Kelly Reilly are perfectly fine as Benjamin and Elaine... the performances by Amanda Boxer and Paul Jesson as Benjamin's parents are perfect and absurd examples of the genre... Rob Howell's sets work with brilliant economy..." The Financial Times

"Kathleen Turner, the Hollywood film star who started off in Body Heat and has never lost the art of sexual provocation, made an absolutely sensational London stage debut last night. Her performance in Terry Johnson's adaptation of that exquisite 1960s film, The Graduate, a black comedy of sexual and family relations in the richer reaches of California, is prime source of the pleasure... Johnson's adaptation does not try to match the film's dash and momentum. Rob Howell's unsuitable stage design, with walls composed of louvred wooden façades, allows for no quick changes. But the prime comic encounters, by which the mistakes of two dysfunctional sets of parents are repeated in the next generation, spark real comic energy. Unfortunately, though, Matthew Rhys's Benjamin, an aimless 21-year-old graduate, musters too little anxiety and agitation when Mrs Robinson makes her shameless pass at him in his own bedroom... Mrs Robinson's revenge drama, which brings Colin Stinton as her impressively vengeful husband in hot pursuit of Benjamin, threatens to tilt Terry Johnson's slick, sometimes coarse-grained production down towards farce. But a climactic, disrupted wedding feast - where Stinton almost runs amok and Turner lashes Elaine and Benjamin with fabulous scorn - fuses the satiric and dramatic elements in wild laughter, as Benjamin and Elaine escape to happiness or to impending disaster. An evening of impure theatrical delight." The London Evening Standard

"Film star Kathleen Turner made her West End debut last night - and took her clothes off. All of them, in subdued - but starkers none the less. This should cheer us up. She's well padded, sexy and she's struck, I believe, a blow against the tyranny of the stick insect figure... Ms Turner's poise and sardonic delivery is as immaculate as it is funny. She does Mrs Robinson brilliantly. Indeed, this Sixties-look stage version by Terry Johnson is never less than watchable. But for my money it fatally lacks any real wind in its hair and two crucial characters: Simon and Garfunkel, who supplied the famous film score... the sheer emotional release of songs like Mrs Robinson never happens. While I salute Matthew Rhys's bravery in the impossible task of filling nerdy Dustin Hoffinan's shoes, there's little rebellious poetry in this Benjamin's soul. His elopement with Kelly Reilly - rather improbable as Mrs Robinson's conformist daughter, Elaine - lacks legs. Johnson, who also directs, is too good a comic dramatist not to supply us with chuckles. The hypocrisy and social pretence of the Braddocks is fun. But maybe, in the end, this upmarket stab at a period classic wasn't such a great idea." The Express

"And here's to you Mrs Robinson - London loves you more than you will know (wo wo wo). It takes courage to follow in the footsteps of Anne Bancroft, who famously seduced Dustin Hoffunin in the film version of The Graduate. But 45-year-old Kathleen Turner pulls it off in style in this production at the Gielgud Theatre, London. She pulls off her bathroom towel as well - which is more than Miss Bancroft did and she was nine years younger when she tackled the role. But anyone from the dirty mac brigade who invests 40p in the theatre binoculars to get m eyeful is in for a disappointment. The much-publicised nude scene is played out in the shadows. From what I could see from my seat in the circle, the shapely figure that first set temperatures rising in the film Body Heat is still in great shape. But the play is not a patch on the movie... When Nicole Kidman took her kit off in The Blue Room it was called theatrical Viagra. Miss Twner's bedroom antics can't compete with that. But she is still a massive turn-on for men of a certain age - so she can expect a long run in her West End debut. Her performance may not win her a BAFTA but she deserves a medal for bravery. And for proving you don't have to be young to look attractive in the nude." The Mirror