Thanks to the 2014 Edinburgh International Festival, English-speaking audiences had a rare chance to see a play by Thomas Bernhard, the celebrated (and controversial) Austrian playwright whose works are, unfortunately, rarely performed in the USA or UK.
Bernhard's Minetti was first mounted in 1976 at the Stuttgart State Theatre; the playwright wrote it to honor one of his favorite actors, Bernhard Minetti, after he had retired from the stage. In the playwright's homage, Minetti (played by Peter Eyre, who, along with director Tom Cairns, did the English translation) is a 69-year-old actor who arrives at a seedy hotel in Belgium to meet an artistic director who wants to cast him as King Lear. Minetti has been out of work for thirty years but still retains some shreds of his dignity and pride, despite being shabbily dressed and broke, to boot. The prospect of returning to the stage in a challenging role, one he has prepared for by rehearsing in his sister's attic, has filled him with hope and given him a badly needed reason to live.
While waiting for the unseen director -- shades of Waiting for Godot -- Minetti regales his captive audience -- a receptionist (Steven Beard), a woman (Sian Thomas), a young girl (Victoria Pollock), and a bellhop (Steven Robertson) with tales of his glory days as an actor, interspersed with speeches from Lear.
It's a snowy New Year's Eve, and occasionally a bunch of masked revelers bursts into the lobby, carrying on raucously and drunkenly. Soon it's clear to Minetti that the director will never come, and so his pursuit of an impossible dream begins to falter and fade. But even as Minetti senses that his life is now over, he goes on doing Lear, an actor to the bitter-sweet, valiant end.
