Memories of misspent youth in TWN's "The Graduate"
BY MARLI GUZZETTA
Terry Johnson's 2000 stage adaptation "The Graduate" - going up at Theatre Workshop of Nantucket this Wednesday - is, like the film, a story about the measure of young manhood in America, and how that commodity must fight to be an asset to its own generation and not an exploited toy of the previous one.

In preparation for the play, director Mike Feeney has had his head wrapped very much around the civil unrest and identity politics of the 1960s. He sees the conflict summed up in one succinct line of the play.

"I've got one word for you Benjamin. ...Plastics," repeated Feeney.

"I remember the transition when everything turned to plastic," Feeney said. "When I was a kid, dish detergent and shampoo were in glass bottles. And then suddenly everything turned plastic, and plastics had the connotation of 'Something not as good as real.' Something fake. So, the

term plastic people came up in the mid-60s. The older generation, they were the plastic people."

Those who have seen the movie will not see old ground retread in the TWN performance; the script is substantially different - filled with more energy and passion and a bit fewer existential ellipses.

Bernadette Feeney (left) is a strutting and striking stage reincarnation of Mrs. Robinson, while Hadley St. John captures the nervous hopefulness of Elaine - both in costumes designed by Cheryl Fudge. Right: Jeremy Pochman (at center) is a more passionate Benjamin Braddock in Terry Johnson's 2000 stage adaptation. Rachel Dowling (at left) is hilarious as the frazzled Mrs. Braddock, alongside Dwight Beman (right), who portrays Mr. Braddock adeptly as a ball of barely contained nerves. Peter Arsenault, Ciaran Byrne and Chip Gustafson round out the cast.

"One way the play differs from the movie - they give it an ending," Michael Feeney said. Instead of closing with the spaced-out faces of Benjamin and Elaine as they abscond on a bus, the young lovers actually go somewhere in the final scene. "And it's more hopeful," added Feeney, who is directing his wife, Bernadette, in the role of Mrs. Robinson.

Jeremy Pochman, 28, plays Benjamin Braddock as tentative and impulsive at the same time - allowing his understanding of the character to stand in for his lack of first-hand experience with the 1960s.

"The biggest issues he's dealing with are the world and himself," Pochman said. "He feels completely impotent and is confused and lost, and is trying to do everything right. But he's completely dissatisfied with his parents and his life, and I think that's something people today face as well."

The character of Elaine is played by Hadley St. John, who, like Elaine, is engaged. St. John's postfeminist directness brings a new level of urgency to Elaine - a character originally conceived while women's roles were being radically redefined.

What's interesting about the play is that the people who read the book and watched the film in their youth, and often sided with Benjamin and Elaine, are now the adults performing and producing it.

Dwight Beman, who plays Mr. Braddock, saw the first run of the film when he was in his 20s. "I thought more highly of Benjamin at that age than I do seeing him now in this," Beman said. "Because I'm a father now I suppose. I just can't figure him out."

Dennis Dreher, lighting designer, nodded in agreement. "My wife is very sympathetic to Mrs. Robinson now. She sees Mrs. Robinson as afraid of losing her womanhood, in a frightening transition in her life."

Bernadette Feeney is the same age as was Bancroft when she assumed the role. Showing up for rehearsal in a breezy day dress, jean jacket and pair of Crocs, she doesn't look a day over 35, and is herself a walking example of the youthful self-definition retained by Boomer and post-Boomer women.

"I thought Mrs. Robinson was hot," said Bernadette of seeing the film when she was younger. Though Mrs. Robinson is struggling with the loss of femininity and youth, Bernadette said, "I'm feeling younger than I did 10 years ago."

That's a good thing for this role.

Born in 1955, the playwright imposed his own anti-plastic reality to the story he borrowed from the novel by Charles Webb and the screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Made famous for a hot minute by Kathleen Turner on Broadway, the Johnson script includes a scene whereby Mrs. Robinson not only has her zipper unzipped, but also fully disrobes onstage.

"She's definitely going to be very vulnerable and expose her body, which is. ... You can't get much more vulnerable than doing that onstage," said Michael, who met Bernadette when the two were cast as husband and wife onstage.

Was it awkward directing his wife?

"In terms of her being in bed with another guy,

it doesn't bother me; she's just another actor," Michael said.

And the onstage nudity? Bernadette is more nervous than her husband, it would seem.

"The first thing that was said to me was, 'You know she has to be naked?' And I said, 'No problem. No problem,'" Bernadette said. "Now that it's coming up, it's a little bit of a problem. But as her, as Mrs. Robinson, I can do it."

The Feeneys even explained to their three children in advance that Mom was playing a part onstage for which she'd be taking off her clothes; Bernadette said she even hopes for this to someday help her daughter to be a little less like Mrs. Robinson.

"It's for Lulu I'm really doing this. I'm middleaged, imperfect body, never had plastic surgery," Bernadette said. "And so maybe someday, she'll be proud of her body no matter what it is."

In other words, it's still okay to eschew plastics.

I THE GRADUATE
When: Wednesday - Saturday, Sept. 20-23,
    27-30 and Oct. 4-7, 8:30 p.m.
  (Oct. 1 matinee at 3 p.m.)
Where: United Methodist Church,
  2 Centre St.
Cost: $25
For more information, go to
  www.theatreworkshop.com or call 228-4305.