4 / 10
The language constantly strives for the poetic but becomes impossibly stilted, leaving the actors making speeches at each other rather than interacting. McGregor in particular, making his return to the London stage after 17 years, seems desperately uncomfortable. Massively charismatic and in the past so fluent, here he is reduced to barking lines like orders, while Debicki has very little to do except gaze winsomely at him.
4 / 10
But timely as all this is, the situation feels oddly contrived and the dialogue often stiff and airless. McGregor suggests that Henry’s confident exterior is undermined by grief and remorse, but he struggles to animate some cloying lines. “You were like this brilliant beam of light in the dark tunnel of my life,” he says at one point. Another character talks of someone “undressing you with his eyes” — the sort of cliché that should have vanished with the first draft. And then there is Mathilde herself, who is expanded from the original and played with immense poise by Elizabeth Debicki, but still feels more like an idea than a person.
Elizabeth Debicki, Kate Fleetwood, David Ajala, Mirren Mack, and Ewan McGregor are leading My Master Builder at Wyndham's Theatre. Check out photos here!
On the eve of July 4th in the Hamptons, Elena Solness, a publishing magnate, is preparing to throw a party to celebrate her architect husband, Henry Solness, as he unveils his latest masterpiece. Their already vulnerable union is shattered by the unexpected arrival of Mathilde, a former student of Henry’s, with whom he previously shared an intimate connection. As the evening unfolds, each find themselves face to face with a reckoning that indelibly tilts the axis of their lives.
Michael Grandage's My Master Builder is billed as a reinvention of Ibsen's play of almost the same name through a modern, female lens. A rich story with themes of control, power, and the search for validation, featuring a host of stars of stage and screen. What could go wrong? Quite a lot as it happens.
Elizabeth Debicki, Kate Fleetwood, David Ajala, Mirren Mack, and Ewan McGregor will star in My Master Builder - a new play by American playwright and screenwriter Lila Raicek. Get a first look at rehearsal photos here!
Elizabeth Debicki, Kate Fleetwood, David Ajala, and Mirren Mack join Ewan McGregor to complete the cast of My Master Builder - a new play by American playwright and screenwriter Lila Raicek.
