Stripped-down "Graduate" flunks

Let's get one thing out of the way.

Yes, Morgan Fairchild does appear buck naked in the Paramount Theatre in "The Graduate."

Specifics: the still-glamorous former star of "Dallas" and other TV series poses sans clothing in semi-shadow as the dipsy L.A. matron Mrs. Robinson, offering her svelte-yet-voluptuous body to clueless Benjamin Braddock, a new college grad a good 20 years her junior.

This strategically lit nude scene takes up about a minute of the two-act touring production of "The Graduate," a ploddingly calculated smirk of a play by British dramatist Johnson, adapted from the renowned 1967 film comedy (and 1963 Charles Webb novel) of the same title.

There's more, though! For added value, one also gets a lingering look at Fairchild's generous cleavage when she appears later in a very low-cut bra. In another scene, a barely-clad stripper twirls her fringed pasties. And, ultimately, Mrs. Robinson's nubile daughter Elaine peels down to bra and panties.

If this review is mostly about disrobing so far, it's because "The Graduate" is essentially a coy, upscale female strip show — with some nostalgic nods to the landmark movie folded in.

That film, expertly directed by Mike Nichols, seemed refreshingly sophisticated and daring for Hollywood in its day. That was partly due to its frank treatment of a loveless but very sexy affair between a seductive middle-aged woman and her much younger boy toy.

But the movie was more than a mildly dirty joke. Its expression of youthful alienation from suburban hypocrisy and stultification was bracing at the time. So was the inventive use of pop tunes (by Simon and Garfunkel) and the ingenious against-type casting of Dustin Hoffman as Ben and Anne Bancroft as Mrs. R.

In Johnson's dreary adaptation, however, the post-collegiate paralysis and ironic identity crisis of Benjamin (played dutifully but flavorlessly here by Nathan Corddry) seem more slackerly than rebellious. And there's barely a tingle of sexual energy in Ben's forbidden-fruit coupling with Mrs. R, or his fixation on chirpy, insipid Elaine (Winslow Corbett).

The stage play dutifully parrots most of the film's best-known lines, including the one word of career advice that symbolized so much 38 years ago: "Plastics." And Johnson's direction makes all-purpose use of Rob Howell's main set, with its walls of louvered doors and windows, and various beds.

But the dialogue here is so repetitive it chokes off laughs. The added material (a mother-daughter drinking bout, a family therapy session) plays like filler. And the other adult figures — Ben's parents, played by William Hill and Corinna May, and Dennis Parlato as Mr. Robinson — are broadly conceived, in the keys of doltish and boorish.

So why has this "Graduate" done well at the box office since its London debut in 2000 and subsequent Broadway run?

Never underestimate the titillation factor. Clearly, casting a "mature" but well-preserved actress a lot of people wouldn't mind seeing naked as the predatory Mrs. Robinson — first Kathleen Turner, later Jerry Hall and Linda Gray, etc. — is one smart ploy.

And Fairchild does her job: She intones her lines in an apt boozy growl. And she appears suitably annoyed and bored by her fumbling young lover, who can barely negotiate a hotel lobby on the way to their first tryst.

But most of all, Fairchild has the steel nerves to bare all for that moment of total exposure the audience is clearly waiting for. So, here's to you, Mrs. Robinson — heh, heh, heh.