Elizabeth Debicki (Mathilde), Ewan McGregor (Henry Solness) in My Master Builder at Wyndham's Theatre. photograph by Johan Persson.Scandinavia is transposed to the US East Coast amidst the cognoscenti and aesthetes of the Hamptons, some of whom are gathered at the beachfront property of celebrated architect Henry Solness (Ewan McGregor, the Master Builder of the title, although he is also referenced as a Pritzker Prize-winning starchitect)! He is about to unveil the reimagined whaling chapel which a decade earlier, burned with his young son Max inside. The glass edifice which he straddles to make a speech (despite issues with vertigo) is designed to be a star shafted portal to the celestial afterlife! I know, eugh!
Among the guests which his wife Elena (Kate Fleetwood) has invited to the grand opening, are Ragnar (David Ajala) one of her husband’s former mentees for whom she has the hots - especially after he strips to his trunks for a pre-dinner dip after espousing the virtues of hedonistic sustainability! He meanwhile, has been engaged in a furtive down low relationship with Elena’s personal assistant Kaia (Mirren Mack) since meeting 7 months earlier. Closing the circle is Kaia’s former school friend and journalist Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki) who once had a very close understanding with Henry when she was his naive and idolising student. Subsequent to their largely unconsummated fling, her life and career were upended by jealous and grieving Elena, who we learn is the powerful head of a publishing empire (perhaps it is she who determines whose page-turners get displayed most prominently at those airport concessions?)
As the key players become reacquainted and attempt to either rekindle lost love, explain why they fell out of love, or avoid unwanted advances altogether, it is the women - particularly Elena - who take charge and mercifully save proceedings from descending into farce. Michael Grandage is an experienced director whose discernible hand on the tiller helps in this endeavour, but it is the writing which more than anything else needs retuning. Elements of #MeToo and the inappropriateness of older white men abusing positions of power and influence over younger, vulnerable (or at least impressionable) women, are touched upon, but there is a lack of clarity around the author’s messaging which frequently undermines the onstage efforts. McGregor in particular seems Master of very little and almost puppyish in his rediscovery of the joys of loving. Now 54, (yet infuriatingly, easily able to pass for a man in his early 40s), the age disparity between Solness and Mathilde feels altogether moot. What the star-billing gods give with one hand, they take away with the other.
Plays at Wyndham’s Theatre until 12th July.
