'My Master Builder' review — Ewan McGregor returns to the stage in a contemporary twist on Ibsen's classic

Read our review of My Master Builder, starring Ewan McGregor, Kate Fleetwood, and Elizabeth Debicki, now in performances at Wyndham's Theatre through 12 July.

Henrik Ibsen’s autobiographical The Master Builder is getting a glow up in the West End, but it isn’t the Norwegian playwright’s name on the marquee above Wyndham’s Theatre. US playwright Lila Raicek has created a new work — My Master Builder — inspired by the 1892 play, giving it a contemporary focus, which attempts to tease out complicated sexual politics.

Set in a luxurious, wood-panelled Hamptons home, architect Henry Solness (Ewan McGregor) and his wife Elena (stage veteran Kate Fleetwood), a publishing magnate, are about to throw a party to mark his latest design feat: a chapel built on the site of an Old Whalers Church, which was destroyed in a fire 11 years prior. Beneath the superficial air of celebration lurks unresolved trauma and marital betrayal, which are brought to the surface by the arrival of Henry’s ex-student Hilda (Elizabeth Debicki), a journalist about to publish her first — and revealingly named — novel My Master.

McGregor, returning to the London stage for the first time in 17 years and reuniting with director Michael Grandage, gives Solness a more sympathetic interpretation than in Ibsen’s play (for one thing, he isn’t guilty of child abuse, as Hilda is a young woman instead of a teenager when they first meet). He is a man consumed by grief after the death of his son, trapped in a strained marriage, who indulges in an affair to escape the darkness in his life. But he is also weak, making the decision 10 years too late that he wants to leave his wife.

His reunion with Hilda is oddly passionless and more could be done to explore and interrogate their complex power dynamic. As soon as they find themselves alone, she conjures up their past desire and the interaction between McGregor and Debicki is awkward, the intimacy stilted. “Maybe you need someone to strike a match,” Hilda says about reigniting Henry’s passion, but they are also fitting words for the pair’s on-stage chemistry.

Despite being the play’s headline star, McGregor is outshone by the women on stage. Ibsen failed to develop his female characters in The Master Builder, but Raicek redresses the balance by exploring Elena and Hilda’s motivations, secret pains, and desires.

Debicki channels the effortless grace she brought to Princess Diana in The Crown, ethereal in costume designer Richard Kent’s steel-coloured gown. However, she only really comes alive when facing Fleetwood, who gives a charged performance as Elena, seeking sexual validation from young architect Ragnar (charismatically portrayed by David Ajala) while yearning for emotional intimacy from her husband. Elena is broken and vulnerable, revealing the impact of two miscarriages following the death of her son; she is also biting and cruel, tearing down another woman in revenge for what she has lost. Fleetwood perfectly balances these complexities, and holds the production together with her acerbic tongue and shattering revelations.

Kent has imbued the play with a luxe feel, from the gentle, breezy fabrics of Elena’s beachwear, to a set design that shows how the Solnesses have wrapped themselves in a beautiful cage — the wooden beams of their Hamptons home obscuring the tranquillity of the sea view beyond. The impressive slatted structure that abstractly represents Henry’s new chapel is strangely haunting, partially revealing the home beyond that holds so many secrets.

In applying a women’s lens to Ibsen’s original story, Raicek raises thorny questions about how women treat each other to get ahead — both in their professional and personal lives. The result is mixed, and perhaps the playwright has been limited by creating something that borrows so clearly from an established text. Still, it remains exciting to see old work interrogated and transformed into something new.

Book My Master Builder tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Kate Fleetwood and Ewan McGregor in My Master Builder. (Photo by Johan Persson)