Brought to book by a sly old fusspot
AMERICAN actor F. Murray Abraham is a relaxed presence on stage.
He stars in The Mentor, a short, mildly amusing play which has arrived at the Vaudeville. If the production is worth catching, it is for the presence of the agreeably liquid Mr Abraham.
By liquid I mean the ease with which he speaks — no straining for effect — and covers the yards on stage and in a speech. He does not exactly project words. They flow out of him. He is relaxing to watch.
In this show he plays veteran novelist Benjamin Rubin, engaged by a German arts foundation to mentor a young writer. They are paid to spend a week together at a country house.
Rubin is a spoilt fusspot and the show opens with him slowly driving an amiable arts administrator ( well done by Jonathan Cullen) to the end of his tether. These moments are the best in the show.
Rubin’s pupil is Martin Wegner, a bright young thing of German letters. Wegner (Daniel Weyman, rather too much like Alan Partridge) bristles with hubris.
The old man soon puts a stop to that. ‘Tell me,’ says Rubin with deceptive gentleness, ‘do you absolutely have to be a writer?’
As he says this, the old goat is eyeing up Wegner’s wife (Naomi Frederick).
At the root of this story is the necessity for creative writers to be given brutally honest verdicts on their work. How seldom this happens. Too many professional critics are frightful suck-ups who ‘go native’ and want to love everything.
This is true of many London theatre critics, alas. Books pages tend to savage an author only when the editor has a score to settle.
Writers may be fascinating to other writers, but their appeal to wider audiences is limited and that is where this play is weak.
It is by Daniel Kehlmann, an of-the-moment German novelist-turned-playwright. Although translated fluently by Christopher Hampton, there is no getting away from the traditionally Germanic lack of selfdeprecation and an overearnest subject matter. Maybe Mr Kehlmann himself could have done with a mentor.