A Stage Seduction Their Own Way

The clock’s hands are making their straight-up, high-noon salute as Kathleen Turner, every bit the sultry-voiced siren of legend, saunters into the Cafe des Artistes, air-announcing, “I’m always on time. The others are not.”

One of those others, Jason Biggs, dark-haired and still very much the charming and slightly naive goof of his film image (“American Pie”) comes along shortly. His watch is losing time; he needs a recommendation for a jeweler in the vicinity of the Upper West Side sublet he’s taken for the duration of “The Graduate” on Broadway.

Turner--”an uptown girl,” she calls herself--is full of advice. And not the kind that her character, the older woman, Mrs. Robinson, notoriously dispenses in the iconic tale of her seduction of a younger man: Benjamin, played by Biggs.

Alicia Silverstone, as daughter Elaine Robinson, destined to muck up that relationship, is the final member of this trio of movie stars-come-to-the-theater in yet another stage adaptation of a film.

At the moment, Silverstone’s reportedly stuck in traffic, but eventually she appears, blond hair tousled, wondering if--perhaps a throwback to “Clueless,” her 1995 hit movie--”I should get an alarm clock?” Turner has a thing she does with her eyebrows. Just saying “arching” doesn’t do it justice.

Turner was up before dawn appearing on “Today” to promote the play, which, after a three-city, out-of-town tryout and a couple of weeks of previews here, opens Thursday at the Plymouth Theatre.

Ask her how much she identifies with Mrs. Robinson, and Turner insists that, personally, younger men aren’t that much of a turn-on. “Unless you count my husband [real estate developer Jay Weiss], who’s a year younger than I am.

“You’ve got to love the bods, but no, there’s not a lot of conversation,” she observes, a line that could be straight out of the “Graduate” script--”Conversation? Why?” is Mrs. Robinson’s bored reply to Benjamin’s attempts to chat.

It’s also the inspiration for banter between the two stars: Biggs, who takes delight in pointing out Turner’s archaic exclamations--”My stars!,” “Heavens to Betsy!”--immediately wants to know, “Are you going to ask me about how I feel about older women? Well, among other things, you’ve got to love their conversation!” Turner’s response is a head-back, toothy, mouth-wide howl of delight.

As lunch progresses, Turner massages her arms beneath the blue wool sweater that matches her eyes. “I work out a lot,” she explains. And of course she does, not just for her arthritic condition (which, because of new medications she touts, is in remission) but because there’s that now-famous nude scene in the play’s first act: In the process of seducing Benjamin, Mrs. Robinson drops her towel and is completely starkers. The audience always gasps.

Turner admits it’s a vanity thing keeping that discreetly lit, fleeting image one that titillates, rather than causes pity. Turner says she required convincing by director Terry Johnson that the nudity “was right for the play and the character. I mean, who the hell wants to do this? And it’s a small theater.”

Turner and Biggs, who spends a lot of time on stage in his briefs, say they pass each other en route to the gym. “I was about 20 pounds heavier for ‘American Pie,’” he says, “lost it, then put it back on two years later for ‘American Pie 2,’ then decided I was going to get in the best shape of my life.”

“Alicia,” says Turner, “is the lazy one,” and the younger actress sheepishly nods her head as she says, “I just don’t have any time. I made out a list of priorities, and sleep is No. 1.” Silverstone has her own production company and last year began producing “Braceface,” an animated series for cable television’s ABC Family channel.

As the only holdover from the original London cast, Turner is the one who’s been dealing longest with the inevitable comparisons to the 1967 movie of “The Graduate,” a generational touchstone that starred Anne Bancroft (who’s on record as not being enthusiastic about this venture), Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross.

“Oh, sure, we benefit from the reputation of the film,” she says. “And there are similar moments. You can tell from the audience’s reaction that we’ve hit upon a memory,” she continues--such as knowing laughter at the one-word career advice--”plastics”--passed along to the recent college grad Benjamin. “But I like to think they’re able to separate us and our interpretation from the film.

“Frankly, I want to do it my way. I haven’t seen the film in 20 years, so there’s nothing lingering, no place where I feel I’m trespassing or borrowing from. Mine is the only Mrs. Robinson I know.”

Re-creating Mrs. Robinson on this side of the Atlantic “did give me pause,” says Turner, a native of Missouri who grew up wherever on the globe her diplomat father’s career took him. “Been there, done that kind of thing.”

She did the show in London for just under six months, then began touring in the States in the title role of “Tallulah,” as in Bankhead. But she hadn’t been on Broadway since 1995’s “Indiscretions,” and in her most recent film she played an uncharacteristically dowdy character in “The Virgin Suicides” (2000). She decided it would be nice to play her glamorous, vampish self as well as be home with her family. (Fourteen-year-old daughter Rachel “is very disapproving of the first two scenes” in “The Graduate.” “But she loves Jason.”)

Biggs and Silverstone weren’t born when the movie of “The Graduate” came out. Biggs, a New Jersey native who began working at age 5 as a model, says he’d long been searching for another stage vehicle (his previous stage turn was on Broadway in 1991’s “Conversations With My Father”).

When the project was announced, he pursued the part and was excited at 23 “to step into a role [Hoffman] had made so famous. It’s an amazing character, certainly my biggest challenge.” In adapting the script for “The Graduate,” Johnson went back to Charles Webb’s early-’60s novel and, among other changes, expanded the role of Elaine. “She’s fleshed out,” says Turner. “I just remember Katharine Ross as looking beautiful and walking around.”

Silverstone says she doesn’t even remember the movie Elaine--”if I ever even saw the movie”--and when she was first offered the role, in the London production (“but after Kathleen had left”), turned it down for that reason. “If I couldn’t remember the image, why do it? But when they came to me [for Broadway], I read it and realized that she was really interesting.”

Also once a child model, Silverstone, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, has spent her entire career in film. “This has been a dream come true for me. I’ve always wanted to live in New York and either do a play or study acting.”

Johnson was not averse to having the 25-year-old help shape the role: Outspoken on the subject of diet (her dogs are also vegans) and animal rights, Silverstone, as Elaine, has a line denigrating the hamburger Benjamin is devouring.

It’s not pure Silverstone, the actress quickly points out. “I wanted to make it something that Elaine would be passionate about at that time,” she explains. “So I thought about starvation. My girl goes to Berkeley, so I watched a really good movie, ‘Berkeley in the ‘60s,’ which was very helpful.”

When “The Graduate” first appeared on the cusp of the sexual revolution, its frankness in dealing with an unorthodox relationship was one of the reasons for its enormous popularity. Now, 35 years later, how does it hold up?

“It does seem almost historical,” says Turner of the ‘60s mind-set. “All sexual relationships are more liberal now than they were 30 years ago. We have to reteach them the old mores.” But, she admits, “I don’t think it’s a normal thing.”

Biggs, who says he’s comfortable in the bedroom scenes with Turner, says he finds Benjamin’s situation “definitely not normal; at least not where I come from.”

“Maybe it’s not so shocking for the audience now,” Silverstone says, “but from my point of view, I’m her daughter, he’s my boyfriend, I find it disgusting. Just plain weird.”

“I keep getting letters from women who write, ‘Thank you for keeping us as a serious threat,’” Turner says of her reception as Mrs. Robinson. “In Toronto, someone sent me a book called ‘The Cougars’--that’s what these women are called in Canada.”

Did she pick up any tips from the book? “Naw, Mrs. Robinson is way ahead of them.”

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“The Graduate” opens Thursday, Plymouth Theatre, 236 W. 45th St., New York, N.Y. (212) 239-6200.

Blake Green is a reporter for Newsday, a Tribune company.