Review: The Graduate, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds; The Who's Tommy, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, and Crucible Theatre, Sheffield

HOW does the West Yorkshire Playhouse website describe the Playhouse and Curve Leicester's new co-production of The Graduate? "Iconic characters from Charles Webb’s novel and the classic film are brought to life in this hilarious black comedy and moving coming-of-age story," it reads.

Hilarious and moving are not the first words that spring to mind on encountering the sleek sheen of the latest Lucy Bailey's show to be staged in Leeds, in the wake of Great Expectations, Dial M for Murder and The Postman Always Rings Twice – and you may remember her brilliant reawakening of The Winter's Tale at the Grand Opera House too.

Terry Johnson's script is darkly humorous, even viciously so, and so it has more in common with Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, where any humour bites hard and comes with an ouch rather than a ho-ho, and good news, there is plenty of ouch, especially in the performance of Catherine McCormack's Mrs Robinson.

What's more, the Sixties' shiny-suited, middle-class, aspirational American world of which Webb wrote was a soulless one, outwardly seductive, but brittle, superficial, enervated. That doesn't make The Graduate moving, but in Bailey's stylish, elegant evocation it makes you understand the disillusion shared by feckless, bored, future-fearing rich kid graduate fantasist and fatalist Benjamin Braddock (Jack Monaghan) and the destructive, lascivious, alcoholically toxic Mrs Robinson, living the American Scream, not the American Dream, as she toys with the boy.

If the combination of Johnson and Bailey is strong on satire and sharp on sexual politics, the one innovation to lend distance from the 1967 film is the greater role for the Robinsons' daughter, Emma Curtis's Elaine, a character intended to bring more genuine emotion to the privileged, plastic world around her. Gradually, however, she too is dragged into the grotesque maelstrom in Bailey's creme de la creme production.

Next door, the New Wolsey Theatre and Ramps On The Moon are filling the Quarry Theatre with the fast, furious big noise of The Who's Tommy, one of the more absurd rock operas and that's saying something.

Essentially a religious allegory with its tale of the deaf, dumb and blind kind sure playing a mean pinball, the show is better than its content in the hands of director Kerry Michael and her cast of actors of myriad abilities/disabilities that match Tommy's state. Theatre should be for everyone, both on stage and off, and Tommy is an exhilarating rallying call for that cause.

The Graduate, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until May 27; The Who's Tommy, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, 2pm and 7.30pm today; Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, June 22 to July 1. Box office: Leeds, 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk; Sheffield, 0114 249 6000.