The Mentor, a 90 minute piece of theatre that's so slight it's scarcely more than a conversation piece, centres around a confrontation between two playwrights.A literary foundation has paid for the former to mentor the latter over a week at a writer's retreat as the younger man shapes his new piece. He brings his lap top and the beautiful wife whose high powered job pays for him to work in the arts.
Of course the older man is cantankerous, caustic, witty and cynical. Of course the young man is impetuous and arrogant. Of course it transpires that they're both as vain and insecure as the other. Of course there's psychological games, the wife becomes a pawn in their power struggle and of course they reach a grudging mutual redirect.
The evening has been packaged as a chic, intelligent evening of cool European culture so there's also plenty of gnomic faux philosophy and flashes of the strange menace you get in a Harold Pinter play.
There are four reasons to see it.
The first is that F. Murray Abraham the oscar winning star of Hollywood's Amadeus and TV's Homeland plays the older man and it's a privilege to see a great actor at his nuanced best even if the play doesn't really require much of him.
The other actors are strangely wooden, often directed to stare into the middle distance as if at the view and to behave very much as if they're figures in a play rather then flesh and blood human beings.
The second reason for seeing it is to find out more about the German playwright Daniel Kehlerman who's novels apparently out sell J.K Rowling's in his native country. I'm afraid, having seen his play, I've no idea why.
The third reason to book is if you're interested in the internal torment of playwrights. I'm a playwright and even I'm not. Plus the idea of a masterpiece that's studied yet not performed for a guaranteed student audience is absurd, as is the idea that a short run of a single new play in a tiny venue could lead to you to being proclaimed a genius by the establishment.
The fourth possible reason for buying tickets to The Mentor, which I can't quarrel with, is that it's short enough to satisfy your appetite to do something cultural whilst also leaving plenty of time for dinner afterwards.
A slight play of slight appeal that's only slightly worth seeing.
The Royal Family has often been a source of material for playwrights. It could be suggested that Shakespeare started the craze in 1590 with his three part depiction of Henry VI. His success with this and other tellings of Kings has inspired generations since to follow suit. One of the most recent additions to this lineage was our current monarch Elizabeth II when she became the subject of Peter Morgan’s 2013 play The Audience. Even her son Prince Charles has had his reign foretold in the satirical King Charles III written by Mike Bartlett and recently adapted for the BBC.