Review The Mentor

The Mentor (Der Mentor)
by Daniel Kehlmann
Translated by Christopher Hampton

The Blagger's Guide To Playwriting
https://www.nimaxtheatres.com/vaudeville-theatre/the_mentor

A celebrated veteran playwright (F Murray Abraham) at the moment finds himself mostly in movie development hell. His most famous work is the stuff of college syllabuses rather than current productions, but he has now received an invitation.

He arrives at a picturesque villa in the German countryside, complete with its own Greek chorus of chirruping birds and ribbiting frogs, as the paid for guest of literary benefactors to mentor a young dramatist (Daniel Weyman).

The younger man's career, maybe on the strength of one adulatory - or perhaps puff-atory depending on your degree of cynicism - review, has gained momentum and seems a suitable case for philanthropy. 

Like some well-worn latter-day Oscar Wilde the older vainglorious Benjamin Rubin, with unnaturally dark hair matched with a grey goatee, at first throws out aphorisms he has concocted, probably as old as his most well-known work.

However Rubin quickly clashes with his not-so-willing pupil Martin Wegner, also a paid for guest, who is accompanied by his cool blonde museum chief and art historian wife Gina (Naomi Frederick).

Tempers fly and there's no way to measure who, out of Rubin and Wegner, is the greater talent or whether they have just negotiated their way through the politics of the playwriting hierarchy.  

The playwright, Daniel Kehlmann, is a hugely popular German-born novelist and playwright and this is a sharp  comedy of manners, positioned as a memory play, written in 2012. 

It's an elegant, lucid performance both visually and aurally from Murray who turns into a kind of comico-tragic Hamlet as directed by Laurence Boswell. Yet we weren't at all sure about the play as a whole, even though the smaller role of frustrated abstract painter-turned-arts administrator Erwin Rudicek (Jonathan Cullen) also made an impression and is a deftly drawn character. 

The set also partially reflects a certain abstraction. We couldn't place the location although we read afterwards it was meant to be Germany.

To our eyes the design (by Polly Sullivan) with its layered perspectives and pink villa reminded us more of a Danish or maybe a Tuscany villa than German Jugendstil also known as the-turn-of-the 20th century nouveau art.

The set is  elegant and ingenious with indications of an unpainted rough draft outline alongside a naturalistic cherry blossom tree. However its indeterminate location may take away from the  meaning of the play.

Indeed we have some sympathy with Rubin's frustration with the Scottish whiskey served by the foundation's administrator - The Mentor is like a blend in landscape and ideas rather than pure spirit.
 
Benjamin Rubin is presumably Jewish (at least on his paternal side) and it appears speaks fluent German which begs a question.

A foundation set up by a German industrialist and his family owns the villa, which itself may beg questions about the Second World War past, and runs the mentoring scheme.  Against this context the profession of Wegener's attractive wife as a history of art expert and museum curator is also a loaded matter.

There are some other clues (the links contain spoilers if you're going to see the show), some rather cryptic and obscure - an allusion to a classic Austrian short story, a reference to an award named for a German Jewish critic famous for his feuds and possibly another to a celebrated German author who admitted late in life SS membership.

This may make this play, with clarinet riffs between scenes by composer Dave Price, more than a slight story of literary egos over a couple of days. But blink, and you'll miss these hints.

It's 80 or so minutes long and before the final moments we were re-imagining it as a movie, mildly in the style of A Bigger Splash, where a director could relish the landscape and plant visual clues.

As it is, in a play, the allusions to German language literature in the early twentieth century and a rather savage subtext feel way too subtle and the comedy drama too abstract.

It would make sense if it were envisaged as going on to be a movie.  Yet, as indicated, albeit couched in the flashback to a comic battle between the older and younger generation, The Mentor does evoke unexpectedly the feel of past ghosts and unresolved matters.

We think we are justified at teasing this meaning out, bearing in mind the playwright Kehlmann's own background with a father who survived  partly as a beneficiary of a confused paper trail laid out by the writer's grandparents.

The geographical vagueness does the play no favours, but we did laugh at the playwriterly neuroses and pondered the change from pen and ink to scripts on computer and possible connections to Greek comedy. It's smart, sophisticated and a well-performed entertainment, but also unsatisfying, so it's an amber light.

Review Hobson's Choice

Hobson's Choice

By Harold Brighouse

Free Willie

http://www.nimaxtheatres.com/vaudeville-theatre/hobsons_choice

It's off to Salford via the Vaudeville Theatre on London's Strand for the Theatre Royal Bath's production of Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice, first produced in 1915 in New York. 

Yes, this product of the Manchester School of playwrights seems to be a global play at home around the world with its pompous merchants and rags-to-riches tale. Indeed in 1965 Sir Laurence Olivier took an Old Vic National Theatre production of Hobson's Choice to Moscow.

In 1880s' Lancashire, family patriach, master shoe and bootmaker and heavy-drinking freemason Henry Horatio Hobson (Martin Shaw) keeps his three dependent daughters, Maggie (Naomi Frederick), Alice (Florence Hall) and Vickey (Gabrielle Dempsey), as, well now we would say, unpaid interns in his successful shoemaking and retail concern.

And open the flap down to the basement, you'll find, like some Morlock of HG Wells, the timid, illiterate, low paid but talented craftsman Willie Mossop (Bryan Dick) originally an Oliver Twist-like "workhouse brat" apprenticed to Hobson.

Maggie, bookkeeper and saleswoman (unpaid), having reached the ripe old age of 30 (!!!) is "on the shelf", or so widower Hobson insists, knowing she is the brains behind his business. 

Meanwhile Hobson's refusal to provide dowries for Alice and Vickey stops them from marrying their beaux, solicitor Albert Prosser (Joe Bannister) and corn merchant's son Freddie Beenstock (Ryan Saunders) respectively.  

Whether by chance or otherwise, a wealthy female customer Mrs Hepworth (Joanna McCallum), similarly encumbered with daughters, sets off a chain of events where Maggie seizes her chance, takes Willie in hand and engineers a transfer of power which also allows her sisters to marry.

At the same time, Hobson's former status as head of his own shoe empire does not prevent the possibility of him sharing the fate of the destitute widow in Brighouse's earlier short play Lonesome Like   

As we noted in Horniman's Choice, it's a mistake to underestimate the sly sophisticated playwriterly skill, disguised under a stage Lanacastrian accent, of Brighouse, a Guardian newspaper reviewer and textile trader,

By coincidence, in fact, TLT and her jalopy settled down with the popcorn recently and watched Joy, a rags-to-riches merchandising tale which, amongst other similarities, even has a widow - Isabelle Rossellini - putting up the capital for a product and a father - Robert De Niro - whose factory benefits from his daughter's - played by Jennifer Lawrence - bookkeeping.

Instead of elements of music hall, it takes on the tropes of TV soaps alongside a change in the balance of power in a household and the themes of wage slaves,  legal chicanery and its own Hobson's Choice.

So this is an enduring comedy as much a Chekhovian and Pygmalion tale as King Lear with a salty Salford twist wherre everyone knows each other's business on Chapel Street. Hobson tries to hang on to his business alone beyond his term, without taking on the requisite son-in-law to take over his business and by doing so unwittingly gives more power to his daughters.

Yet this particular production of Hobson's Choice, directed by Jonathan Church,  overall needs a harder edge, although the central trio of Martin Shaw's Hobson with his Biblical rhythms of speech, Naomi Frederick's Maggie and even Bryan Dick's Mossop all acquit themselves with a steely core when called for with the necessary, almost Darwinian, ruthlessness.

No wonder, John Braine, we realised, took the title of his 1957 novel about a  go-getter climbing the greasy corporate pole from a line in this play.

Produced for the first time on Broadway two years before the USA entered the First World War, at the heart of the play remains a Dickensian mystery - who exactly is Willie Mossop to have been given these chances? 

In spite of his lowly status, he is also the object of attention from his landlady and her daughter (a finely judged cameo by Emily Johnstone) until he is grabbed by the ear, literally and metaphorically, by Maggie.

This production has its highlights, not least a detailed set by Simon Higlett which uses the revolve to magnificent effect to enhance the psychic space of the play in the second act. 

Nevertheless, there are times when it does drag between the moments of reversal, as if by wanting to reach the dots, some of the lines in between are neglected. Still, it's a legitimate interpretation and a solid production of a classic play and so a TLT amber light.    

Review Hand To God

Hand To God

By Robert Askins

The Rocky Puppet Show

http://www.nimaxtheatres.com/vaudeville-theatre/hand_to_god

First of all, there may be those readers who believe wrongly TLT is an online sock puppet. And a sock puppet with its own sock puppet in the shape of her little equally opinionated limo.

Let us clear this up once and for all. We enjoyed this show, Hand To God, though we are definitely not sock puppets. We are a human being and a motorised vehicle with a birth certificate and a current MOT.

And we are not connected in any way shape or form with: Hand To God anti-hero Tyrone, a sock puppet masterfully manipulated by Harry Melling as troubled teen Jason; sock puppets in general; writer cum bartender Robert Askins; director Moritz Von Stuelpnagel or designer Beowulf Boritt.

But we did wonder whether the spectacularly-named Moritz Von Stuelpnagel or Beowulf Boritt really existed from birth, especially when widow Margery (Janie Dee) rips out pages of patriarchal family trees from the bible with relish.

But a quick search of that new bible, the internet, reveals a real Moritz Von Stuelpnagel, an educator as well as director. And, if related, a Von Stuelpnagel family with a serious history.

OK, so it looks as though Askins with his Ubu Roi in Rural Texas romp wasn't talking to his own sock puppet director in rehearsals. But Beowulf Boritt? Surely ... But yes, here's another guy with a serious family history.

Back to the Vaudeville. Pastor Greg (Neil Pearson) asks Margery to put on a performance to showcase the work of the sock puppet ministry (oh ye of little faith, these actually exist) attended by her introvert son Jason, local juvenile delinquent Timmy (Kevin Mains) and girl-next-door Jessica (Jemima Rooper) on whom Jason has a crush. But Jason also has his life taken over by his xxhis own handxx demonic sock puppet, Tyrone ...

TLT and jalopy did wonder if Tyrone had appeared as a cartoon character on the small screen in a cartoon sitcom, it would have been seen as just another of the South Park/Family Guy genre, even with, or perhaps because of, the puppet-on-puppet sex (did we mention that?!).  But theatre is its own powerful visceral medium with a different impact on its audience. And Jessica's reaction to Jason's devilish appendage on stage is - strangely innocent and resourceful - and very funny.

Some of the story threads do feel as stitched together as a character's torn off ear (maybe we're all turning into patched-up puppets?!!!) and of dubious taste, yet this is the gospel according to Tyrone, not Saint Jason, Timothy, Gregory or Margery. 

Give yourself up to the truly mesmerizing performance of Melling as Jason and sock puppet Tyrone  without too much detailed analysis and you'll understand why it's proved an almost cathartic experience for audiences. 

Oh, and Beowulf Boritt's revolving sets, complete with a little limo no less (what's not to like?!), also keep this fable fast and frantic with the puppets designed by Marte Johanne Ekhougen in this hellishly funny sermon.

So Texas may be famous for its lone star, oil wells, the Bush family, cattle, the assassination of a president, cowboys, as the buckle of the bible belt, Enron and the burrito. But it can now can add Tyrone the devil sock puppet to its Wikipedia list. Aw shucks, Hand To God's not perfect, but humans ain't perfect neither, so it's a yee haw amber/green light from us.

Review Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer

by Tom Morton-Smith

http://www.rsc.org.uk/

The Big Bang

Years ago when Traffic Light Theatregoer was just a little molecule and her trusty sidekick not even a single neuron, Walt Disney, no less, and a real German scientist Heinz Haber introduced her to the joys of nuclear physics. ;)

For her rural primary school hired various instructive films for the edification of its young minds and, lo and behold, forever etched in her memory was the projected glorious Technicolor of Disney’s Our Friend the Atom.

Neither Walt nor Heinz (who actually had a very dark World War II record ) with their ambitions to educate the youth of the world with a script of admirable, if rather propagandist, clarity appear in the RSC’s Oppenheimer by Tom Morton-Smith. 

Nevertheless at least one refugee German and one Hungarian scientist do pop up in this lengthy three-hour stage biography of J Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb. Both speak heavily accented but entirely fluent idiomatic English, rather improbably for recent refugees.  

The play takes a linear trot through the career of Oppenheimer from university professor to the realisation of the potential chaos which his ivory tower and desert oasis research eventually unleashes on the beleaguered world. 

Mixed with this are the dynamics of unravelling personal and workplace relationships, self-interest and moral choices forced upon academics and public figures amidst the tricksy world politics and shifting alliances from, in the 1930s, the rise of Hitler and the Spanish Civil War to Hiroshima and the start of the Cold War.

Until the final scenes of the play, we encounter (unusually for such a biographical pageant) Oppenheimer as a stranger with hardly any context of family background as motivation, other than knowing his brother to be a communist and his subsequent love affairs, marriage and kids. 

This seems rather mischievous and skewed. For the play, which has transferred from Stratford Upon Avon to the Vaudeville Theatre in London,  presents a straightforward path for the students and lecturers into education. Any adoption of communism as a creed is seen as an equally straightforward ideological battle of theories:  Communism versus Fascism.

In fact, only mentioned in the very last scenes, J Robert Oppenheimer was from a secular Jewish German family. And the play never mentions the relatives in Germany or even the precarious academic situation for Jews the year he entered Harvard in 1922 during an attempt to issue a quota for Jewish students. 

So many of those in Oppenheimer’s circle were not simply adopting a political stance but felt a real threat both to themselves and their relatives if fascism marched on unchecked in Europe and made its presence felt in the USA.

J Robert Oppenheimer is a well-worn subject with films, TV and even an opera. There are times when the play Oppenheimer with its plethora of characters feels like a series of much smaller plays, with the eponymous character and his personal dilemmas lightly sketched and crowded in by other personalities.

This turns Oppenheimer into less an exploration, in scenes, of a life than a series of cartoons touching gently on weighty subjects without any in-depth investigation. 

Is the point that Oppenheimer took a resolutely secular route, thinking he could overcome any religious restrictions by ignoring them and plunging into research? Is this an attempt to make him into an everyman academic immersed in research, perplexed by personal relationships and emotional difficulties, finally made to face reality? None of these is adequately addressed or possibilities explored. 

Underwritten characterisation and on-the-nose dialogue sometimes distracted your petrolhead twosome from what should be a much more visceral story.

The second act did bring moments which linked the tale told to our 21^st century life: The dominance of the gadget, the libraries of data in an automated capitalized world. Plus mention of increased access to higher education where, as we know in the case of university pre-credit-crunch financial modelling, love of pure research has its own inherent dangers.

At the same time, the production values of the play with Robert Innes Hopkins’ punchy design  and sharply effective direction from Angus Jackson admittedly draws fine performances from a hard-working cast with John Heffernan maintaining the energy of the piece as the scientist pursuing the ultimate goal. 

Maybe the nearest we have in Britain to J Robert Oppenheimer is Barnes Wallis, embodied in more naturalistic terms in 1955 by Michael Redgrave in The Dam Busters. Nevertheless, he remained firmly within the confines of the arms industry and cinema screen without the apocalyptic global implications of the nuclear weapon to which Oppenheimer’s name is inextricably linked.  

Meanwhile, in a week when The Economist has on its cover “The whole world is going to university. Is it worth it?", there is still enough about Oppenheimer and his environment in this play to give pause for thought, even beyond the bounds of atomic technology. An amber light.

Tickets to Oppenheimer courtesy of 

Official Theatre www.officialtheatre.com

NB A Guardian-like correction: TLT's blog is, as you may have noticed dear reader, full of accuracies but occasionally the sub-editors slip up, the proof readers let it through and perfection is not reached ... Apologies to writer Tom Morton-Smith, who for a few hours had the wrong name (Morton-Hill - wrong, Morton-Smith - correct) in this review ... We are of course mortified and would discipline and suspend those members of staff who allowed this primary school error to be published. Except of course TLT is the sub-editor - and the proof reader - and boss of this blog. However this public spirited review institution does not wish this one day to blow up into a Jeremy-Clarkson situation. So in an effort to be transparent, taking staff welfare and freelance discipline seriously, Human Resources (Senior Manager: TLT)  this time, while not summarily dismissing the subs' desk (TLT) and proof reader (TLT), has issued a stern first warning to all concerned ... ;)