(seen at the afternoon performance on 7th May 2025)
Based on, but not adhering strictly to, Ibsen’s “The Master Builder”, Lila Raicek is content to serve up a “chick lit” cliché script, ill served by Michael Grandage’s depressingly static direction.
Endless "two actors facing each other and spouting memorised words" sequences grate even more when they are created by a director of his experience and stature. How he concluded that the script required them, the monkey doesn’t know, but it did feel that perhaps a female director may have found far more in the work.
Henry Solness (Ewan McGregor) may have a flying buttress every woman desires, but this play is about the power of women – how each wields it and uses it to resolve struggles between them.
The interest lies here. McGregor is in a constant state of rehearsal for his professional life, and does well to sustain interest before his confrontation of personal issues, past and present, give him scope to broaden and humanise greatly his performance.
Between wife Elena (Kate Fleetwood) and ex-pupil Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki), there is plenty to confront. Fleetwood is impressive as a wife scorned, wronged and reaching intelligently for both offensive and defensive weapons as required.
Debicki does well to round out the simple emotions she is called on to communicate, her skilled mixing of the unappetising palette eventually producing several strong second act scenes.
Friend (and Solness factotum) Kaia (Mirren Mack) is similarly sketched until Mack uses her interaction with visiting architect Ragnar (David Ajala) to bring heat and colour to the pairing.
Richard Kent produces a peculiar chapel of vented planks, and a rather luscious East Coast USA beach home. Paule Constable appears to struggle with the former’s white surfaces but happily animates the party lights.
Just about justifying a new direction thanks to the cast adding to the construct of their characters with whatever comes to hand, a firmer grip on a less intricate blueprint is the over all impression the architects leave on this monkey.
