When a big star appears in a conspicuously undercooked show, what rankles is the apparent cynicism — the conceited presumption that the sheer aura of an individual talent will compensate for any shortcomings. That concern rears its head once again in a new take on Henrik Ibsen’s “The Master Builder” which opened on Tuesday in London, featuring the Scottish A-lister Ewan McGregor in the title role. In this instance, it’s apt: Artistic hubris is a central theme of Ibsen’s 1892 play, in which an aging architect, worried that his powers are waning, loses his head over an infatuated young woman.
This version, called “My Master Builder,” is written by the New York-based playwright Lila Raicek and directed by Michael Grandage; it runs at Wyndham’s Theater through July 12. Raicek’s interpretation sets out to center Ibsen’s female characters, retelling the story through the lens of #MeToo — but it ends up reducing a complex play to a tawdry marital melodrama.
We’re in the Hamptons, in an elegant dining room backing on to a seaside landscape, with crickets chirruping throughout. (The set is by Richard Kent.) McGregor plays Solness, a celebrated “starchitect” whose moribund marriage to the publisher Elena (Kate Fleetwood, cracklingly erratic) is set to implode as they prepare to host a party celebrating his latest opus: A dazzlingly futuristic church, built in memory of their only son, who died in an accident many years ago.
McGregor plays an architect who had an affair with a former student, played by Elizabeth Debicki.Credit…Johan Persson
Among the guests is Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki, ambiguously winsome), with whom Solness had an adulterous fling 10 years earlier, when she was a 20-year-old student of his. Back then, Elena, despite being an avowed feminist, had responded to the revelation of the affair by trying to destroy Mathilde’s reputation. Mathilde has since written a novel about the dalliance, and Elena — who is about to file for divorce — offers to publish it out of spite.
This sordid story is thrashed out over two emotionally charged hours, in a register that toggles uneasily between soapy cliché and cynical sass. (There are several quips about the phallic symbolism of tall buildings.)
