By Jackie Demaline
The Cincinnati Enquirer

The Graduate is a been-there, done-that kind of night that is more like primetime than theatre.

Well, not quite like primetime. The touring production which continues as part of Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati has a bare bones set (with a bed usually the primary prop from scene to scene) and the flashes of female frontal nudity would most certainly relegate it to pay cable.

Based on the book that also birthed the movie hit from the Sixties, The Graduate is Benjamin Braddock (Jonathan Kaplan), new college grad completely disillusioned by life in the upscale 'burbs where everybody has an in-ground pool and drinks like a fish.

He falls in love with sweet and naÔve Elaine (Devon Sorvari) but the romance has one itsy-bitsy mountain in the way - for months (for lack of anything better to do) noncommittal and confused Benjamin has been carrying on an affair with Elaine's mom Mrs. Robinson (Dallas star Linda Gray).

Gray is confident and smooth, but none of the points in this romantic triangle are involving. (If you've ever seen the film version, you know that Benjamin and Mrs. R., at least, can be.)

Benjamin needs to be compelling in his modest meltdown. Since mostly every upper middle class white American (who are basically the ticket buyers for this show) has had one or two modest meltdowns along the way, we stand ready with our sympathy for him.

But Kaplan doesn't pull us in as Benjamin staggers through the pinball machine that is his life. He plays it. He just doesn't feel it.

You don't much care what happens to any of them, and you could leave at any point to check the fridge for a snack (at least you could if you were at home) and not much care that you'd missed a few minutes here and there.

Then again, if you were home and had a remote control handy, you'd probably use it.

It doesn't help that while the stage version is not political in the sense that the movie was, The Graduate was born of social issues which, while they still exist, have tumbled from high priority. It doesn't even make it as nostalgia.

The grown-ups make a more indelible impression than the young lovers all around, with the supporting cast as lively as you could want: William Hill and Corinna May do good work as Benjamin's mystified parents and Dennis Parlato is suitably oblivious then disgruntled as cuckolded Mr. Robinson.

The Graduate is the kind of theater that isn't so much bad as completely forgettable.

The Graduate, through Dec. 28, Fifth Third Bank Broadway in Cincinnati, Aronoff Center for the Arts, 241-7469.