TIL_Sommer_21-7-17

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THE MENTOR – Vaudeville Theatre
It has been some while – a decade in
fact – since F. Murray Abraham (playing
Shylock for the RSC), plied his
considerable talents on a British stage.
Best remembered for his Oscar-winning
turn as Salieri in Milos Forman’s film
version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, and
as as the CIA’s Dar Adal in the TV series
Homeland, it’s unlikely his star turn in
The Mentor will put bums on seats or
add lustre to his CV.
In The Mentor, by German playwright
Daniel Kehlmann, whose books in his
home country outsell J.K. Rowling’s, he
plays a waspish playwright called
Benjamin Rubin who, at the age of 24,
wrote a celebrated play on which his now
evanescent reputation rests. Although
studied in universities, the play is never
revived and his career is on the skids.
Yet in the opening scene, a
contemporary playwright, Martin Wegner
(Daniel Weyman) has just won the
Benjamin Rubin award at a BAFTA like
ceremony for his latest play, though why
there is an award in his name is unlikely
(a) given Rubin’s waning status, and (b)
playwrights rarely, if ever, have major
awards named after them.
Be that as it may, we now flashback
several years to a luxury villa where a
wealthy arts foundation has, for a fee of
10,000 euros, asked Rubin to mentor a
work in progress by a self-satisfied,
over-confident ‘new generation’
playwright who turns out to be the very
same Martin Wegner of the prologue.
Jonathan Cullen.
Naomi Frederick and F Murray Abraham
in The Mentor. Photos: Simon Annand.
Wegner’s latest opus is pretentiously
called Without A Title and he, too, is
receiving 10,000 Euros plus five days
free accommodation for himself and his
wife Gina (Naomi Frederick) as the
beneficiary of Rubin’s expertise. But
nothing in this particularly idyllic garden
is lovely when, having read Wegner’s
play, Rubin initially comments about the
font in which the script has been set. He
then goes on to talk about some
misplaced apostrophes in the text. The
only positive remark he can muster is
that the manuscript is free of typos.
Finally, when cornered for an opinion,
Rubin, mock-quotes certain pretentious
passages to prove his point and damns
the play as ‘dreadful’. He then adds
injury to insult by asking Wegner ‘do
you absolutely have to be a writer?’
It all ends badly with the hapless
Wegner throwing his computer and
manuscript into a pond, storming out of
the villa and leaving Rubin free to hit on
Wegner’s wife – whom, we learn, doesn’t
think much of her husband’s work either.
What, in essence, the play is really
about isn’t the hurtful satisfaction Rubin
enjoys by dumping on the younger
upstart and his unstageable play, but
whether any of us has the right to
pronounce on the artistic merits of a
piece of work. What Kehlmann seems to
be questioning, is one’s perception of art
and what qualifies us to pass judgment
on it? In the end, does it even matter?
Nothing earth-shattering here nor
anything Yasmina Resza hasn’t already
confronted in her superior play Art.
Despite Christopher Hampton’s nifty
translation, which is often quite funny,
there is a palpable air of contrivance to
this 80-minute literary farrago.
Would Rubin, who clearly needs the
money, have been quite as destructive,
insensitive and boorish knowing he might
never be invited to mentor again? We’re
told that before approaching Wegner (who
insisted on the 10,000 Euro fee when less
was being offered), not a single young
playwright applied to take part in the
mentoring sessions. Really? Five days
including meals, accommodation, a
luxury villa, plus payment and the
opportunity to have their work assessed
by an established playwright, and no
takers? I just don’t buy it.
Surprisingly Wegner, the intellectual
great white hope of playwriting, doesn’t
know what ‘bi-polar’ means. And would
this cocky, arrogant young man, despite
being so grossly humiliated, have thrown
his laptop into a pond? (His manuscript
maybe, as he could always print it again.)
I had no misgivings, though, about
F. Murray Abraham’s performance. With
his resonant voice and his impressive
presence, this 77 year-old veteran still
commands attention. Whether
mischievously scoring points off his
younger adversary or comparing the
relative merits of Speyside whisky with
Johnny Walker Red Label, he stamps his
authority on a role that, like the play itself,
promises more than it delivers.
Weyman’s Wegner effectively fluctuates
between full-throated arrogance, selfdoubt
and despair; though Frederick as
his wife and Jonathan Cullen, who
completes the cast as the put-upon
skivvy-cum-arts-administrator in charge
of the five day retreat, do what little the
script requires of them nicely.
The set, whose most striking feature
is a pair of chairs in the shape of a hand,
is by Polly Sullivan.
CLIVE HIRSCHHORN
t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g a z i n e • t h i s i s l o n d o n o n l i n e