Benjamin Rubin is a cantankerous old writer, whisky aficionado and pedant, still basking in the reflected glory of long-ago success. Martin Wegner is a rising young literary star, heralded as 'the voice of his generation'.
When Martin is given the opportunity to develop his new play under the mentorship of his idol, the writers meet in a dilapidated art-nouveau villa somewhere in the German countryside. Two massive egos are set on a collision course in this perceptive and compelling comedy about art and artists and the legacy of fame.
Christopher Hampton's translation of The Mentor by Daniel Kehlmann premiered at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath, in April 2017.
Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975 and lives in Berlin and New York. His novels and plays have won numerous prizes, including the Candide Prize, the Doderer Prize, the Kleist Prize, the Welt Literature Prize, and the Thomas Mann Prize. His novel Measuring the World was translated into more than forty languages and is one of the biggest successes in post-war German literature. He is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library.
Christopher Hampton was born in the Azores in 1946. He wrote his first play, When Did You Last See My Mother? at the age of eighteen. Since then, his plays have included The Philanthropist, Savages, Tales from Hollywood, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, White Chameleon and The Talking Cure. He has translated plays by Ibsen, Molière, von Horváth, Chekhov and Yasmina Reza (including Art and Life x 3). His television work includes adaptations of The History Man and Hotel du Lac. His screenplays include The Honorary Consul, The Good Father, Dangerous Liaisons, Mary Reilly, Total Eclipse, The Quiet American, Carrington, The Secret Agent and Imagining Argentina, the last three of which he also directed, and A Dangerous Method, based on his play The Talking Cure. Appomattox was first presented on the McGuire Proscenium Stage of the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis, USA, in September 2012 as the centrepiece of a major retrospective of his plays and films.
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