Review: My Master Builder (Wyndham's Theatre)

Review by Sam Waite

⭐️⭐️⭐️

When new film and TV slates are announced, I try to veer away from the Too Many Rehashes discourse – certainly, there are a seemingly endless amount of reimaginings, reboots, and direct recreations of well-loved stories, but the next wave of artists and creators have always paid homage to its predecessors. Take for instance Henrik Ibsen, whose Hedda Gabbler is frequently staged, whose An Enemy of the People still relatively fresh in West End memory, and whose Ghosts has a modern imagining still playing, at the time of writing, at the Lyric Hammersmith.

So it comes as no great surprise to find Ibsen paid homage to once again in My Master Builder, a new play by Lila Raicek running at the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre. Ewan McGregor stars as Henry Solness, an architect who plans to dedicate his newly-finished project to his late son, whose death a decade prior clearly left its mark on both Solness and his wife, Elena. Insisting on throwing a lavish party to celebrate the end of a long and laborious job, Elena pushes her assistant Kaia to invite her best friend, a girl named Mathilde on whom Elena knows Henry has previously made advances.

Raicek has taken some elements more directly from Ibsen’s The Master Builder, while adding touches of her own to explore her own curiosities around the “psychosexual warfare” she observed as the dinner guest of an eccentric couple. Writing from the vantage point of being the younger woman employed a piece in a longstanding marital game, it makes sense that Raicek’s women are the more compelling characters. Elena, Kaia and Mathilde present the traits of stock characters – the shrewish, micromanaging wife, the mousy, devoted assistant, the starstruck, eager mistress – but Raicek brings depth and deception to each of their arcs, asking not that we choose who we like or support, but acknowledge the reason for each’s behaviour.

As the star attraction of this flashy new production, McGregor is as central to the advertising as his character is to the story. He carries himself with ease on stage, but the character simply isn’t interesting enough to be tasked with too much of the heavy emotional lifting, though he does acquit himself well to the task when it does fall to him. Though the women around him are far more compelling, McGregor delivers some strong scenes towards the end of the performance, and manages to amusingly sell the lust-stricken fool he is momentarily reduced to with reliving his past indiscretions with Mathilde.

More engaging but perhaps less fully explored is former protégée Ragnar, brought to life by a dynamic and exciting David Ajala. There’s little for Ragnar to do beyond be flirtatious and overly cocky, but I can’t deny that Ajala does a fantastic job of both. Opposite him for several scenes is Kaia, Mirren Mack’s assistant to Elena Solness. Beginning as a demure, friendly presence in the Solness home, Mack’s performance comes alive when her affair with Ragnar is revealed, and her combination of sisterly banter and cutting critique – Elena, she notes, seems to undo decades of feminism in some of her comments on other women – is a real winner.

In this play seemingly centred around the character of Henry Solness, it is the two women most tightly entwined with him who prove the most exciting. Elizabeth Debicki presents a shy, deferent front when Mathilde is introduced, though there is a brazenness that quickly comes through once she and McGregor are alone on stage. Blonde, statuesque and beautiful, Debicki pulls off the delicate balancing act between a young girl still recovering from being taken advantage of, and a sensual woman set on having the man she desires. This is where Raicek’s insistence that we draw our own conclusions becomes apparent – Debicki’s Mathilde is played with the strength of a woman in control of her situation, but also the delicacy of a young girl afraid to be hurt again.

Michael Grandage has opted, seemingly, not to interfere with this openness to interpretation. Neither guiding characters or actors towards duplicitous overtones or an overabundance of earnest, Grandage keeps movement natural, deliveries distinctly human. McGregor has the only deliberately flowery, needlessly artsy lines, a clearly deliberate touch from Raicek to enforce how used to creating perfect images Henry is, and it’s only these lines on which Grandage loosens the reigns and allows more overt theatricality into the production. An unfortunate side effect of this same openness is a slightly meandering quality as the characters are slowly introduced during act one. The second act is more brisk, more energised, but for a play running at just two hours including an interval, the relaxed pace of the opening left the production feeling uneven.

The show’s most finely-tuned performance comes from Kate Fleetwood, as the text’s most interesting character. It’s no surprise that McGregor and Debicki both do their best work when sharing the stage only with Fleetwood, whose committed and powerful performance brings out the best is her castmates. Leaning into the domineering wife archetype to decimate it from within, Fleetwood is utterly brilliant at portraying Elena’s blend of frustration, fear and fragile devotion. Whether throwing out a withering line, boisterously flirting with an old friend, or begging her husband not to give up on their life together, Fleetwood is totally believable and utterly arresting.

All of this takes place is the Solness’ airy, naturally-lit home, crafted by Richard Kent with enormous windows looking out to a seaside view. The simplicity of the set allows for it to become their sun-drenched dining area and open outdoor locales in later scenes, while a section of the newly-rebuilt chapel is periodically lowered for its introductions to the public. There’s a strong sense of scale in Kent’s work, allowing us to imagine the larger world around these scenes while what we actually see is kept minimal and to what is actually needed.

Riffing nicely on the original though uneven in its pacing, My Master Builder benefits from its talented cast and evocative design, even when things feel like they’re taking that bit too long to get going. With its slow-building tensions and calculated moves, My Master Builder may be too languid in places for some, but it’s certainly never dull – Raicek and Grandage’s efforts to bring to light the strain people put on one another, and the ways in which we can find ourselves as pawns in someone else’s unending chess game, have certainly succeeded.

My Master Builder plays at Wyndham’s Theatre until July 12th  

For tickets and information visit https://allthatdazzles.londontheatredirect.com/play/my-master-builder-tickets

Photos by Johan Persson