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Stage bound
Jason Biggs graduates from Pie to plastics
BY MARK BAZER



In 1967, upper-middle-class young white men watched a " worried about my future " Dustin Hoffman hear about the potential of plastics in The Graduate and thought, " Hey, that confused and alienated guy is me! "

In 1999, a new generation turned its lonely eyes to Jason Biggs making it with an apple pie and thought, " Thank God that’s not me — though, gee, it sure could have been. "

The times have certainly changed, but as the American Pie subplot involving Stiffler’s mom made clear, the idea of getting it on with your friend’s attractive, boozy mother hasn’t lost any of its thrill. Now, Mrs. Robinson returns in a pre-Broadway run of Terry Johnson’s stage adaptation of The Graduate. Kathleen Turner plays the notorious seducer; Alicia Silverstone plays daughter Elaine; and filling Hoffman’s shoes — and scuba outfit — as Benjamin Braddock is 23-year-old Biggs.

Taking on a role so associated in people’s minds with another actor has to be difficult, but Biggs immediately distinguishes the play from the film and stresses the different challenges he faces in creating Benjamin. " We’re working obviously with the same character and the same story, but an adaptation for the stage lends itself to a new interpretation, " says the actor, speaking on the phone from Toronto, where the show, already a hit in London, is in the midst of a Baltimore-Toronto-Boston journey to Broadway.

For starters, the movie’s classic shots (the view of Benjamin through Mrs. Robinson’s legs, the moments he spends submerged underwater) can’t, of course, be replicated on stage. But, Biggs says, " I believe that our set and costume designers and our lighting designer have done an amazing job at setting a tone and a mood on stage that is so wonderful, and that I believe can bring the same to the play that those types of shots brought to the movie. "

Biggs does note that " the play’s not as subtle as the movie, the humor anyway. Things on stage tend to be a little larger — and need to be. Dustin Hoffman was working for the camera and thus could be more subtle. Working on the stage, you’re just not able to do that; you’re performing for the last row. "

But before theatergoers look up Biggs’s teen-comedy-filled résumé and worry that he’ll turn Benjamin into some kind of farting machine, it’s worth noting the subtlety, yes, subtlety, required of him as the hapless, sexually befuddled Jim in American Pie and its obligatory sequel. Despite getting into the most comic, unreal of situations — Krazy Gluing his hand to his penis — Biggs’s Jim never seemed clownish. And overall, he nailed the role of the borderline-geeky kid who hangs out with a cool crowd but never gets the girl.

The Graduate also isn’t Biggs’s first trip to Broadway. At 13, after acting in a few commercials and a short-lived sit-com, he starred with Judd Hirsch in Herb Gardner’s Conversations with My Father. " [Since then], I’d always kept my eye open for a theatrical opportunity, even the last couple of years while I was making films, " Biggs says. " I love making movies, and I will always go back to that. But The Graduate’s just been great. I forgot how much I love the stage. "

And to hear Biggs laugh, almost disbelievingly, as he discusses The Graduate, you might think he finds the play to be the most outrageous material he’s worked on yet. " [Even] in this current Jerry Springer age, if you will, where we hear all about crazy, messed-up families ... the fact that a 21-year-old young man is sleeping with his father’s best friend’s wife — and then falls in love with her daughter and breaks up the wedding. To me, that’s still pretty edgy and pretty shocking. " And that’s coming from a guy who says, " I think I’ve done one of the best shock-value comedies ever, as humbly as I can put it. "

It will be a while before Biggs returns to the world of shock-value comedies. The only film he’s got in the can is Prozac Nation, an adaptation of Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir, in which he plays Wurtzel’s college boyfriend. And while Biggs doesn’t rule out an American Pie 3, he says, " I’d like to do some other types of things. I’m a big dark-comedy fan, i.e., your Coen Brothers. That’s really my favorite type of comedy. "

But for at least the next six months, Biggs will have to settle for being seduced night after night by Kathleen Turner. " I’m working incredibly hard on this, " he says. " I eat, sleep, breathe Benjamin Braddock. "

The Graduate is at the Colonial Theatre February 20 through March 10. Tickets are $25 to $72, available at the Colonial box office or through Ticketmaster at (617) 931-2787.

Issue Date: February 14-21, 2002
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