Quick review: See it, funny but a bit empty
The Mentor by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Christopher Hampton and directed by Laurence Boswell is a comedy, unsurprisingly, about a mentor.
Benjamin Rubin, played by F Murray Abraham, is a 60-something writer who has been paid to mentor Martin, the voice of his generation, played by Daniel Weyman. It turns out that no one applied to be mentored by Rubin at the residential writing programme, partly because his first (and last) success was written when he was in his 20s; hence, Martin is also being paid to attend. Rubin declares Martin’s manuscript to be extremely poor and what follows is a lightweight farce-like interaction between Rubin, Martin, Martin’s wife Gina, played by Naomi Frederick, and the programme organiser, Erwin, played by Jonathan Cullen. Martin may or not be a bad writer, Gina may or may have slept with Rubin, and most importantly, Rubin may or may not have read Martin’s work.
The Mentor, translated from German, reminded me a bit of Art because it deals with a concept, in this case, mentoring, and the characters are archetypes rather than real people. Rubin is an archetypal bitter older person, resentful that he’s only known and admired for work done in his youth. Martin is the archetypal writer who is simultaneously arrogant because of praise he’s received in the past, and so uncertain of his ability that negative feedback leads him to chuck the laptop containing the only version of his manuscript into a lake. Gina is an archetypal partner who wants to support her spouse, but doesn’t actually think he’s talented. Erwin is the archetypal administrator, who fluffs about and tries to keep everyone happy, but fails.
The Mentor is frequently funny, the acting and direction are good, but because the characters are fairly two-dimensional, it has a light and hollow tone.
Date: 13 July 2017
Venue: Vaudeville Theatre, 404 Strand, London, WC2R 0NH
Running time: 1 hours 30 minutes
Picture source: thisistheatre.com
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