Keegan Theatre's truer-to-life 'Graduate'

Age, according to director Kathleen Akerley, is the least relevant fact about a person. So it's no wonder she is reluctant to reveal exactly how old she is (mid-40s, according to published reports).

What is surprising, however, is the big deal being made of the age of the director's latest leading man. Tom Carman, who plays 21-year-old Benjamin Braddock in Keegan Theatre's production of "The Graduate," is himself 21, unlike Dustin Hoffman, as Keegan's publicity material carefully notes. (Hoffman was 30 when the 1967 film came out, a mere six years younger than co-star Anne Bancroft, who played Mrs. Robinson, the iconic older woman who seduces him.)

Akerley insists that her casting decision had less to do with Carman's youth than with the innocence he possessed that other auditioners did not. "He alone had the sense that he really didn't know what he was dealing with," she says, referring to the scene in which Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson meet. "It's hard -- actually, it's impossible -- to manufacture genuine confusion, but he had that."

In general, Akerley wants the audience to forget the film. Not that that will be easy, with a movie that's as famous as "The Graduate" and a stage version (written in 2000 by Terry Johnson) that, according to Akerley, engages in "too much sampling" of dialogue and physical bits from the film. The oft-quoted party scene line -- "I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics." -- is lifted directly from the movie. Listen carefully, though. Akerley has found a way, without cutting dialogue, to erase it. Laughter from other party guests drowns out the punch line.

Akerley says the biggest change she has made is in the nature of Benjamin's relationship with Mrs. Robinson (actress Sheri S. Herren, who is also in her 40s). Unlike the "cold and somewhat feral" quality of Bancroft's portrayal, Akerley says, Herren's character is more human.

"My Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin meet cute," she explains. "She's not hunting. She's drunk and bored with the party."

While the director thinks that her interpretation is truer to life -- if not to the original 1963 novel -- she hopes to bring to the production some of the heightened theatricality her own company, Longacre Lea, is known for. To that end, she has staged certain scenes with characters standing in stark, almost dance-like formations. "It's realistic exchanges between people, realized theatrically," she says.

In the end, Akerley would most like to correct what she calls the mismatch between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson, an imbalance underscored by the film version. She calls her own spin on the story "a psychological study of love and mistakes. It's not grotesque. It's a young man and a woman trying to connect. In a sense, it's a love scene."

The Graduate Church Street Theater, 1742 Church St. NW. 703-892-0202. http://www.keegantheatre.com. Through May 18. $25-$30. The show contains nudity and sexual situations, and may be inappropriate for younger audiences.