STAGE REVIEW: The Graduate - at the Festival Theatre, Malvern, from Tuesday, June 13 to Saturday, June 17, 2017.

THE majority of the full-house audience at this opening night performance were of the age to remember well and fondly the iconic 1968 film which starred Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft as Benjamin and Mrs Robinson.

Based on the novel by Charles Webb the stage play concerns a repressed, bored, alcoholic housewife whose husband basically ignores her.

Benjamin Braddock, a university graduate, is having to endure a 'coming of age/graduation party being thrown by his proud parents.

Invited along are their close friends the Robinsons.

Mrs Robinson, splendidly portrayed by Catherine McCormack, a deeply unhappy, lascivious alcoholic, has every intention of bedding the naive, somewhat dim Benjamin, played by the excellent Jack Monaghan, much in the style of Dustin Hoffman in the film.

The stand-out seduction scene follows Benjamin announcing to his frustrated father that he "won't be joining the guests waiting for him downstairs because they are grotesque, I'm grotesque, we're all grotesque!”

The Robinsons daughter Elaine, sees a feisty Emma Curtis, the polar opposite of her mother, introduces a modicum of normality into Benjamin's chaotic and rebellious life. Here was another excellent performance.

Mike Britton's set designs are suitably authentic and atmospheric for the 1960s, showing a differently positioned double bed against a backdrop of swishing curtains and occasional black and white projections of party guests.

Praise also goes to Elsie Diamond as a stripper in the nightclub where Benjamin takes Elaine on a date, who 'dances' at their table, but deeply embarrasses Elaine.

Webb's original novel was largely a look back over his life and this latest adaptation is by Terry Johnson and directed by Lucy Bailey.

Bailey does it with a creditable thoroughness and although we all know you can’t get the depth of every situation on stage as you can on the big movie screen it does a more than adequate job in wafting the senses back to the huge Hoffman and Bancroft box office sensation.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

VRW