The Mentor

Playwright: Daniel Kehlmann Translator: Christopher Hampton Director: Laurence Boswell Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath Sawclose, Bath (01225-448844) Until 6 May

Like a child “with an unerring sense of where the Easter eggs have been hidden”, Laurence Boswell, the artistic director of the Ustinov Studio at the Theatre Royal Bath, has shown “a remarkable knack for unearthing European talent”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. It was the Ustinov that took a punt on The Father by France’s Florian Zeller, a brilliantly nuanced play about dementia which went on to take the West End and Broadway by storm. Now, again teaming up with translator Christopher Hampton, Boswell introduces us to Daniel Kehlmann, a novelist “so hot in his native Germany that he has even knocked J.K. Rowling off the bestseller lists”. His play, The Mentor, has such “ample merriment at the expense of artistic egos” that it has attracted the American actor F. Murray Abraham – an Oscar winner, as Salieri in Amadeus (1984) – to the British stage, his first theatrical appearance here in ten years.

The show certainly has the “aura of an event”, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. And even if the play’s arguments about “the subjectivity of art, and the uncertainty of experience, are familiar”, it is full of “prickly comedy and offers 90 minutes of civilised pleasure”. Abraham plays Benjamin, an arrogant, truculent older playwright whose one great play he wrote decades ago, said Ian Shuttleworth in the FT. Since then, Benjamin has been living off former glories, and here we find him working, at the behest of some charitable foundation, as mentor to a bumptious younger playwright, Martin – well played by Daniel Weyman. But though Abraham gives a fluid and assured performance, the play itself is ultimately diverting rather than profound.

Both script and staging are “overemphatic”, said Matt Trueman on Whatsonstage. com. The Mentor reveals too much of its meaning early on, and the setup plays out all too predictably. The pleasure, though, lies in seeing a great performer like Abraham “toy with it”; he is one of those actors who can make “moments momentous”.

CD of the week

Ray Davies: Americana Sony Music £9.99 The Kinks frontman, backed by The Jayhawks, has come up with a fine album, ranging from rock to gentler numbers, including the gorgeous ballad Message from the Road and the record’s “distinctive, almost Tom Waitsian highlight, Change for Change” (Sunday Times).