Ewan McGregor has told the story of his involvement in this, his first London show in 17 years. He grabbed a play at random to read on a flight in September last year and it happened to be Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder. He then received an email out of the blue from director Michael Grandage and, in his reply, mentioned that he’d just read the Ibsen work. Grandage was taken aback; as chance would have it, he had a new reworking of that very play on his desk at that moment. The universe must be telling them something! Perhaps such an extraordinary coincidence engendered a sense that this production was “meant to be” which might go some way towards explaining how the piece, by a young, unknown playwright called Lila Raicek, has ended up on a West End stage with a starry cast.
Set in the affluent Long Island resort of the Hamptons, My Master Builder has McGregor as feted “starchitect”, Henry Solness. It’s the eve of 4 July and Henry is celebrating the completion of his restoration of an old whalers’ church. However, unbeknown to him, his publishing magnate wife, Elena (Kate Fleetwood), is considering divorcing him. Ten years ago he had an intense but unconsummated relationship with his 20-year-old student, Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki), now an arts journalist. For reasons of her own, Elena has invited Mathilde to their house. Meanwhile, Henry’s protégé Ragnar (David Ajala) is in a relationship with Elena’s assistant Kaia (Mirren Mack) but they don’t want Elena, who has the hots for Ragnar, to know. The official bumph for the play suggests the principals find themselves “face to face with a reckoning that indelibly tilts the axis of their lives”. Personally, I found the reckoning distinctly delible.
Conventional wisdom has it that it’s quite difficult to get a play on in the West End, after seeing this I’m not so sure
The last time McGregor was on a London stage, he was Iago to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Othello in a production at the Donmar, also directed by Grandage. That show was a triumph. With the best will in the world, no-one could regard My Master Builder as a triumph. It’s an overwrought, undercooked relationship drama with some truly wince-making dialogue from the outset. Henry describes his latest work as “the David Bowie of chapels, on the slippery edge between sacred and profane”. Yes, his character is meant to be pretentious but no-one actually talks like this, not even architects.
When Mathilde rocks up, Henry is shocked to see her but the pair waste little time in rekindling their romance, despite the fact that their earlier entanglement derailed Mathilde’s life. (Still, at least she got a novel out of it — she called it Master.) “You were like a brilliant beam of light in the dark tunnel of my life,” Henry tells her. Astonishingly, she doesn’t burst out laughing. Turns out she’s as bad as he is. “I no longer have the fire in me I once had,” he whines. “Then maybe you need someone to strike a match,” she says, and an entire theatre cringes. I hope her novel was better than this.
The play is, I suppose, about sexual politics and #MeToo and power dynamics in relationships. But Henry is a tedious windbag in the grip of a midlife crisis and it’s impossible to understand what either his powerhouse wife or his willowy would-be lover see in him. Even when we learn that Henry and Elena lost their young son in a tragic accident, it’s difficult to feel much for them. By the time there’s a fierce argument between the pair towards the end of the show, I’d completely lost interest. Has Henry ploughed into the restoration of the church the energy he should have devoted to restoring his relationship? Is he the architect of his own downfall? Am I bothered? The extent of my engagement with the play was simply to see how the actors would get through it rather than to discover what happens to the characters. Fleetwood is the stand-out, imbuing sparky Elena with anger and resentment. Debicki does a credible slinky siren. McGregor seems to drift through the show. Little is demanded of Ajala and Mack.
Much of the action takes place in the Solnesses’ expansive dining room with its expensive sea view, but there are also scenes at the whalers’ church with its towering steeple (Henry has vertigo — uh-oh) and on a moonlit beach. Richard Kent’s coolly elegant set is, unfortunately, the most memorable element of this production.
Conventional wisdom has it that it’s quite difficult to get a play on in the West End. Established, award-winning writers can apparently struggle to get their stuff staged by top notch casts in prestigious theatres. But after seeing My Master Builder I was left wondering how hard it can really be. Hats off to the New York-based Lila Raicek, who has a degree in Playwriting from Columbia University but seems to have few credits to her name. She told Tatler magazine, no less, that the play was inspired by her own experience at a fancy dinner party in the Hamptons where, she says, she found herself being used as a pawn in some sort of weird psychosexual power game between the British hostess and her husband. When Raicek mentioned this experience to “her producer”, he urged her to put pen to paper. She allowed herself eight weeks to write the play. Next thing you know, hey presto, it’s being performed in the heart of the West End. Funny old business, show business, eh?
My Master Builder at www.wyndhamstheatre.co.uk runs until 12 July
