Here's To Nude, Mrs. Robinson

Nudity is nothing new on the London stage, where respected actors have undressed with some frequency since censorship there was abolished about 30 years ago.

Now a new play, based on the classic film The Graduate, is causing a stir, not only for what's being shown, but for who's showing it. CBS News Correspondent Richard Roth reports.

More than a generation and a half ago, it was a satire about alienation, and a young man's seduction, with Anne Bancroft as the older woman of 45, making Mrs. Robinson a household name.

Now movie star Kathleen Turner (who is 45) is hoping to do the same on the London stage. The Graduate is opening in London Wednesday in an adaptation that was hardly talked about until preview audiences got in to see it.

In a scene with co-star Matthew Rhys (playing the role originated on film by Dustin Hoffman), Turner wears only a towel…but not for long.

Turner has told the BBC, "Mrs. Robinson's behavior is shocking, you know, and it comes rather out of the blue."

Kind of like a lightning bolt right to the box office. Says ticket clerk Bill Doyle, "It's gone wild. It was busy before [the previews] but since it's been in the newspapers and things, it has gone absolutely wild."

With critics already talking about raw acting talent and a bare market on the British stage, Turner simply says she's making a point.

"A woman of my age is not supposed to be attractive, or sexually appealing. Well, I just get kind of tired of that," the actress told the BBC.

Co-star Rhys, who admits to a certain amount of "shaking and sweating" when he met Turner and to the pressures of following in Dustin Hoffman's definitive footsteps, told Reuters he can relate to the allure of having an affair with an older woman.

But Turner is not overly fond of Mrs. Robinson.

"The way she treats her husband and her daughter and Benjamin, she's really a very unhappy and nasty kind of woman," Turner told Reuters. "I hate to say it, but it's really a bit of a stretch for me. I'm really a nice person."

The difference between Turner on screen and Turner on stage is a sense of dangerous spontaneity, according to theater critic Nicholas DeJong of the Evening Standard.

"At 45, everything's in a bit of a decline, isn't it? he says. "So there's that sort of extra frisson: middle-aged flashing."