Melanie Griffith delivers a superstar turn as befits a Best Actress Oscar nominee, director Michael Matthews once again proves himself an L.A. theater superstar, and newcomer Nick Tag reveals emerging-star power in Laguna Playhouse’s The Graduate, a production so stellar you might just think you’re seeing a Broadway show.

 Griffith sizzles like nobody’s business as (Here’s To You), Mrs. Robinson, bent on bedding Tag’s adrift and aimless Benjamin Braddock before tonight’s college graduation party is over, or so any fan of the 1967 Anne Bancroft-Dustin Hoffman-Katharine Ross comedy classic can tell you, an affair soon to be complicated by the arrival of Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine, back from school and encouraged by a clueless Mr. Robinson to date his wife’s much younger lover.

 Taking the best of both Charles Webb’s 1963 novel and the Mike Nichols movie smash (screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry), playwright Terry Johnson has created a stand-on-its-own stage adaptation that honors a film buff’s need to hear classic lines like “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?” and to re-experience classic sequences like the one that leads from a hotel lobby to the first of many afternoon delights for the horny teen and his enthusiastic sex tutor, not to mention Ben and Elaine’s disastrous first date at a topless bar.

 Perhaps best remembered on Broadway for Kathleen Turner’s nude scene opposite Jason Biggs’s Ben, The Graduate at Laguna Playhouse nixes that bit of gratuitous body-flashing in favor of Griffith in skin-tight skimpy undies that more than do the trick.

It’s clear from the get-go that director Matthews will be on a role from lights-up to curtain calls as the entire cast of characters surround a Neoprene diving-suited Benjamin in deliciously choreographed show opener set to the first of a couple dozen ‘60s pop hits (kudos to sound designer Mike Ritchey) linking scene after scene without a single blackout.

A sextet of Chapman University theater majors* move set pieces and assist in costume changes in seamless transitions that not only keep the action moving, they fill in storytelling blanks along the way.

 Scenic designer Stephen Gifford’s groovy set is the very definition of ingenuity as bedroom, hotel lobby, bar, church, and other assorted locales, costume designer Kate Bergh provides a dazzling array of psychedelic tops and bell-bottom bottoms and some of the sexiest dresses ever to cling to Melanie Griffith’s curves, and Tim Swiss lights all of the above with flash and pizzazz.

 Best of all are the performances Matthews has elicited from his stellar cast, beginning with Griffith’s sensational Mrs. Robinson, whose breathy, baby-doll voice instantly conjures up memories of Working Girl (and a host of other films) while making it abundantly clear that there’ll be nothing of Bancroft or Turner in this platinum-blonde, stiletto-heeled, comedically-gifted deadpan delight of a Mrs. R.

 As for Tag, not only does the tall, lean-muscled, runway-model handsome up-and-comer look nothing at all like Hoffman or Biggs, his awkward, earnest, geeky, naïve, occasionally calculating Ben is very much the USC grad’s own creation in a role that keeps him front-and-center in virtually every scene and commanding the stage every step of the way.

 Talented newcomer Magruder completes The Graduate’s romantic triangle to vivacious, capricious effect, with Richard Burgi’s militarily maneuvering Mr. Braddock, Geoffrey Lower’s dynamically driven Mr. Robinson, and Valerie Perri’s fabulously flighty Mrs. Braddock providing terrific support in major featured roles, Joey Fabrizi and Taylor Rene LaBarbera scoring comedic points for his snooty desk clerk and her sassy tassel-twirling stripper, Gregory Butler earning multiple laughs atop one of four humungous psychiatrist’s beanbag chairs (the others occupied by Lower, Perri, and Tag), and the redoubtable John Massey showing up as a hilariously harried priest.

Vernon Willet is production stage manager.

 With star power you’d expect to be seeing on a Broadway stage, direction that could just as easily be lighting the Great White Way, and an exciting new leading man you’ll be seeing much more of, Laguna Playhouse’s The Graduate is both an entertainment bonanza and bona fide box office gold.

*Jordan Barrie, Maggie Dorfman, Blake Jensen, Ryann Kristensen, Madi Lang-Ree, and Lizzy Mosher

The Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach.
www.LagunaPlayhouse.com

–Steven Stanley
March 4, 2018
Photos: Ed Krieger

Tags: Laguna Playhouse, Melanie Griffith, Orange County Theater Review