Preview Report: THE MENTOR at the Vaudeville Theatre

Stuart King 3 July, 2017, 10:32

The Mentor Benjamin Rubin, who, aged 24 penned his first and only truly groundbreaking work and in later years has literary notoriety but also bills to pay, accepts the invitation of a wealthy foundation to act as temporary mentor to Martin Wegner (played with jittery arrogance by Daniel Weyman) who is their latest ‘voice of his generation’ discovery. The result of this uncomfortable pairing (which seems flawed and motivationally unconvincing), is a week spent in the country: mentoring, nit-picking, fretting about frogs, generally mis-communicating and taking every opportunity to treat the Foundation’s administrator with disdain.

It culminates in a grubby and drunken attempt by Benjamin to seduce Martin’s wife whilst the latter is away, presumably trying and distil a sense of self-worth from the ego-bashing which has gone before.

On paper at least, the premise of a tetchy, sometimes oily ‘old school’ grump, clashing with a youthful variant of himself, should provide plenty of cross-generational contempt and opportunities for sparks and indeed, sparkling wit. There are fleeting moments, (e.g. when signing a copy of his seminal work, Rubin wryly observes: “I’ve done this so often, it’s the unsigned ones which are rare”), but they lack punch and dare I say, a literary acidity. Certainly this work by German playwright Daniel Kehlmann has a lot going for it - not least the casting of Oscar winner F Murray Abraham (whose name will always be synonymous with playing Salieri in “Amadeus”). In reality however, the play becomes little more than an excuse to expose the faltering confidence of age and the self-important idiocy of youth.

Christopher Hampton, whose undoubted playwrighting skills and text translations have benefited countless productions, just doesn't seem to have nailed this four-hander, at least based on the late preview I saw. Phil Willmott reviews the finished production at next weeks press night.

The Mentor