A star returns in high style
Like a child with an unerring sense of where the Easter eggs have been hidden, the Ustinov Studio at the Theatre Royal Bath has (under the artistic directorship of Laurence Boswell) shown a remarkable knack for unearthing European talent.
Thanks to this singular bridge between regional theatre and the Continent, we have come to know and admire the intellectually playful, psychologically astute work of Frenchman Florian Zeller. And now Boswell – teaming up again with Christopher Hampton, go-to guy for nippy translations of deceptively light modern classics from over the Channel – introduces us to Daniel Kehlmann. The latter is a novelist so hot in his native Germany that he has even knocked JK Rowling off the bestseller lists, and his play The Mentor affords such ample merriment at the expense of artistic egos that it has lured the American actor F Murray Abraham over here for the first time since giving us his Shylock at the RSC 10 years ago.
In a neat twist that will raise an added smile in those who fondly recall his Oscar-winning turn in Amadeus as Salieri – patron saint of mediocrities, and surreptitious Mozart-slayer – he plays Benjamin Rubin, a once eminent playwright who shatters the creative confidence of a talented younger man he’s supposedly helping over a mentoring week sponsored by a wealthy benefactor.
Where the late Peter Shaffer’s masterpiece aspired to the condition of tragedy, however, this ranks more as a provocative divertissement. Kehlmann’s most successful novel is the fictionalised scientific biography
Measuring the World; the subtitle for this could be Measuring the Word. It looks at the subjective nature of artistic judgment, but its primary gift is the spectacle of men behaving pettily.
Sporting a grey goatee and bald pate (at striking variance with the follicle-replete rehearsal shots in the programme), Abraham exudes an entertaining air of desiccation and disdain as the literary has-been who acts like royalty but is desperately short of royalty cheques. He swiftly makes his presence felt in the chi-chi courtyard – complete with blossoming tree – that is to be his character’s main hang-out with feted young playwright Martin (Daniel Weyman).
Instantly inducing suppressed exasperation in the scheme’s fawning (but creatively frustrated) facilitator Erwin (Jonathan Cullen, great work), he nitpicks about his creature comforts. “Two more pillows, not too soft,” he grouches. And the TV must go: “They give off more radiation than a nuclear power-station.”
His pomposity is soon pricked by the realisation that there was no stampede to be mentored by him. But that only spurs the demolition job he faux-reluctantly unleashes on Weyman’s bundle of neuroses, having first (hilariously) picked his way through his mentoree’s script, asking mainly about the font and pointing out typos. The youth halfrealises where his elder is coming from – a place of envy and moreover lust (Rubin has eyes for Martin’s wife Gina, who’s growing tired of being the breadwinner and childless). But the doubts cast by both on his talents are enough to push Martin to breaking point, hurling his script into the frog-pond.
Much more than this it would be unfair to divulge – not that there’s masses more to divulge. A harsher critic might snipe that this reads like a classy first draft – running to only 90 minutes, it would benefit from more detailed characterisation for Gina (Naomi Frederick, purselipped and perceptive-seeming) and a stronger resolution. It isn’t fully achieved, but then it has so deftly asked what “fully achieved” entails that you accept its limitations, and lap up the agreeable satire.
Where Shaffer’s masterpiece aspired to the condition of tragedy, this ranks more as a provocative divertissement