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Saturday, January 29, 2005
‘The Graduate’ doesn’t pass
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THEATER REVIEW: “The Graduate.” Through Sunday.
And here’s to you, Morgan Fairchild. We love you more than you will know. Wo, wo, wo. That’s because — hey, hey, hey — you make a mighty dishy Mrs. Robinson.
But in all honesty, the TV starlet with the hourglass bod and ash-blonde hair is about the only saving grace in the touring company of ”The Graduate,” which arrived at the Fox Theatre on a freezing cold Friday night for a weekend run.
Based on the looks of this production, turning Mike Nichols’ classic 1967 film into a stage play probably wasn’t such a good idea. All the irony of the bitter dark comedy starring Anne Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson and Dustin Hoffman as the disillusioned young man she seduces is lost in director Terry Johnson’s flat-footed adaptation.
The 2002 Broadway version with Kathleen Turner was generally described as a disappointment, but it enjoyed a yearlong run largely because it allowed Turner’s considerable following to get a full glimpse of her anatomy. (It probably didn’t hurt that Turner played opposite ”American Pie” hottie Jason Biggs, as Benjamin Braddock.)
The national tour has been likewise marketed around Fairchild’s come-hither looks and her reputation as a glamorous star of TV soaps such as ”Dallas,” ”Falcon Crest” and ”Flamingo Road.” But to her credit, the 54-year-old Fairchild proves to be much more than a relic from the era of J.R. Ewing and Alexis Carrington.
Powdered to a farethewell and speaking in a knowing feline roar, Fairchild’s Mrs. Robinson nearly devours the boyish and naive Benjamin (Nathan Corddry). During intermission, there was some speculation in the room about the provenance of Fairchild’s voluptuous rack. “Plastics”?
Please, people. Don’t be so tacky.
Fairchild has a good time putting her own stamp on Mrs. Robinson’s chic mystique. She’s smug but not deadly and seems to know a lot about the kind of antiseptic beauty and anesthetized emotions that the story sends up. As Mr. Robinson, Dennis Parlato is appropriately slithery at first. When his character discovers his wife’s infidelity, he becomes sympathetic, his anger and rage authentic.
Alas, the rest of the cast treats the first part of the show as if they are in a low-brow comedy. Corddry is a technically proficient actor, but he portrays Benjamin like a clown, glossing over the moral conundrum of this emotionally complicated character. Most of the time, Benjamin’s so chipper that you don’t buy into his ambivalence or his nascent love for Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine (Winslow Corbett).
While the tone of the film was acerbic and ironic, here it’s all over the place. The upbeat beginning seems to have been dumbed down for mass consumption. So when the characters start to reap the consequences of their irresponsibility, the raw, authentic emotions confuse us.
To this day, Bancroft and Hoffman’s performances remain emblematic of the middle class malaise of the ’60s. Like John Updike’s ”Rabbit” novels and Edward Albee’s ”Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, ”The Graduate” scratches through the artificial perfection of suburban America to reveal a dark underside, the ennui beneath the swinging cocktail parties, sky-high hair and lunar landings.
Toward the end of the play, Mrs. Robinson tells her husband to leave Elaine and Benjamin alone. ”They’ll bore each other to death,” she quips.
After seeing this half-baked take on ”The Graduate,” we know the feeling.
THE 411: 2 and 8 p.m. Jan. 29 and Jan. 30. $30-$55. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-817-8700, www.foxtheatre.org.
The verdict: Fairchild gets an A, but the show flunks.
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Death, Gloom and Mozart at the ASO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Concert Review Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Friday in Symphony Hall. Program repeats Saturday. www.atlantasymphony.org.
Friday in Symphony Hall, Donald Runnicles presented a concert loaded with so many potent messages that it was unclear which, if any, were well served.
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor isn’t shy about linking music to political ideals. In remarks to the audience, he alluded to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and described the evening’s opening work, Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s 1934 “Miserae,” as “an artist’s response” to early reports of German concentration camps.
“Miserae” is a symphonic poem at turns mournful, martial and sarcastic. The ASO played it cleanly but without much invested emotion.
Follow Hartmann with Richard Strauss’ “Death and Transfiguration” and Mozart’s Requiem, however, and another historical theme is suggested. The hyper German nationalism of the 1930s led to widespread misery and genocide — and also severed the Austro-German musical tradition that stretched back several hundred years, to Mozart and before.
Hartmann and Strauss were the last in that elite lineage, killed off, culturally speaking, by their own leaders. A fraught program, to say the least. Yet Runnicles left unsaid its implications for a contemporary audience.
For the evening’s third and final work concerning death, Mozart’s unfinished Requiem, Runnicles elected to perform Robert D. Levin’s 1993 completion. This edition follows current notions of “early music” style — stripped of romantic varnish — and is rapidly becoming the standard edition of our time. There have already been several recordings of the Mozart/Levin Requiem; the ASO is recording it this weekend for Telarc.
Since there is no universally acceptable version of Mozart’s Requiem, it is fair that each generation takes a fresh look at what the master left us in order to create a new edition. It’s a fun process, filling in the gaps of a torso masterpiece. Alas, Levin’s handiwork is scrupulously Mozartean in style, so scrupulous as to be bland.
That Levin himself composed a brief “Amen” (placed after the “Lacrimosa” and based on a Mozart sketch) raises all sorts of authorship and identity issues. Art restoration is a messy, inexact process. But what’s the harm? Unlike a “scholarly” touch-up of a Leonardo painting or Michelangelo sculpture — where introduced chemicals might do more harm than good — a musical reworking does not mar the original fragments, at least not past a given performance.
In performance, Runnicles assembled a balanced, rich-voiced vocal quartet: soprano Christine Brewer, mezzo Ruxandra Donose, tenor John Tessier and bass Eric Owens.
He also drew exquisite sounds from the chamber-sized orchestra and chorus, although much of the music making was curiously bloodless, performed more with respect and correctness than heart and soul.
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