Theatre
Review
Review: My Master Builder
The latest reimagined classic on the West End transports Ibsen to the Hamptons
Ibsen’s 1983 classic The Master Builder, the story of an older man’s relationship with a younger woman whom he has known since she was a child, was always a controversial piece, made only more so as time passes. Lila Raicek’s new playat Wyndham’s Theatre, directed by Michael Grandage, takes controversy for its subject – the focus in My Master Builder is not on the relationship between Elizabeth Debecki’s Mathilde and Ewan McGregor’s Henry so much as it is on the collateral. From Debecki’s university friend Kaia (Mirren Mack) to Henry’s coldly funny, coldly vicious wife Elena (Kate Fleetwood), the impact of their decade-old tryst ripples out, and conversations are sparked around power, sexual agency and victimhood.
Raicek’s reimagining sees McGregor return to the stage as rather a pathetic protagonist, a great architect unable to stand upright and take accountability of himself, whilst his wife schemes and jabs and loves him anyway. Fleetwood is magnificent, a charismatic presence onstage that suggests danger in every move she makes, even as we discover how pitiable she truly is. As Elena, she decides to celebrate Henry’s greatest accomplishment by inviting for dinner his protégé and the subject of her own sexual fascination (David Ajala) as well as the student he had a passionate – but apparently chaste – affair with ten years ago. My Master Builder does away with the more sinister connotations around Hilda’s age, placing Mathilde at 20 when she and Henry first meet, rather than the stomach-turning 13 that she is in Ibsen’s play. Still, the new version doesn’t shy away from the imbalance of power that still remains. Mathilde insists that she’s more a victim of Elena than she ever was of Henry, accusing Elena of attempting to ruin her life, whilst Henry is too much of a wet blanket for us to be convinced by him as a predator. Yet the unsettling feeling that Henry has altered Mathilde’s past forever is one that neither she nor the audience can outrun.
It’s a tight-knit family drama that feels a little like an episode of some HBO show about the rich, with Richard Kent’s set evoking the empty warmth of an expensive seafront property that utterly fails to be homelike. By the time the play reaches its unfortunate conclusions, it’s hard to perceive any of the players in a particularly sympathetic light. The messy politics and grey areas feel true to the age we live in. Who knows what Ibsen would have made of it.
My Master Builder is now playing at Wyndham’s Theatre until 15 July – find tickets here
