Ibsen Turns into Chick Lit

Henry: “I no longer have that fire in me.”

Matilde: “Then maybe you need someone to strike a match!”

This new version of Henrik Ibsen’s 1892 play The Master Builder by Lila Raicek is directed by the great Michael Grandage and has three stars of stage and screen. Now set on America’s East Coast, Ewan McGregor plays an award winning architect Henry Solness living in the Hamptons. Playing his publisher wife, Elena is the wonderful Kate Fleetwood who is suffering from her husband’s infidelity and the loss of their son ten years beforehand in an accident.

It might have been better received as a play without the adapted Ibsen title. The original idea for the author was her invitation to a dinner party in the Hamptons where she realised that she was a pawn in a psycho-sexual game being played by her married hosts. So in My Master Builder the guest is Matilde (Elizabeth Debicki), a friend of Elena’s PA Kaia (Mirren Mack) but who had a near affair ten years ago with her architect mentor and Elena’s husband, Henry Solness.

Besides coping with the loss of her son, Elena has been convinced that Henry’s infidelity started with Matilde, then known as Hilda, and she tells Kaia that she has prepared the divorce papers. She also has entertained infidelity of her own. Curiously it is Elena who has invited Matilde to stay with them. Also at the party is another architect Ragnar (David Ajala) who may be Elena’s lover.

There are beautiful sets from Richard Kent showing the house overlooking water in the Hamptons. Another set using white painted wood is of the old 1800 Whaling chapel which Solness has renovated with delicate white timbers reaching to the stars (rather than to the Heavens!) The lighting from Paule Constable is exquisite for these wooden structures by day and soft night time blue skies.

I wasn’t convinced by the chemistry between Elizabeth Debicki as Matilde and Ewan McGregor as an older man besotted with a younger beautiful woman. On stage the four inches difference in height, he is considerably shorter, may be heightist but it is noticeable.

For me the acting star of this play is Kate Fleetwood who we see peel the layers off the successful publisher and wife into someone much more vulnerable and troubled. For those who want to see Ewan McGregor onstage My Master Builder will tick the box but sadly no more.