Ewan McGregor, Back Onstage, Is the Architect of His Own Folly

[ad_1] When a giant star seems in a conspicuously undercooked present, what rankles is the obvious cynicism — the immodest presumption that the sheer aura of a person expertise will compensate for any shortcomings. That concern rears its head as soon as once more in a brand new tackle Henrik Ibsen’s “The Grasp Builder” which opened on Tuesday in London, that includes the Scottish A-lister Ewan McGregor within the title position. On this occasion, it’s apt: Creative hubris is a central theme of Ibsen’s 1892 play, wherein an getting older architect, fearful that his powers are waning, loses his head over an infatuated younger girl.

This model, referred to as “My Grasp Builder,” is written by the New York-based playwright Lila Raicek and directed by Michael Grandage; it runs at Wyndham’s Theater by way of July 12. Raicek’s interpretation units out to heart Ibsen’s feminine characters, retelling the story by way of the lens of #MeToo — but it surely finally ends up lowering a fancy play to a tawdry marital melodrama.

We’re within the Hamptons, in a sublime eating room backing on to a seaside panorama, with crickets chirruping all through. (The set is by Richard Kent.) McGregor performs Solness, a celebrated “starchitect” whose moribund marriage to the writer Elena (Kate Fleetwood, cracklingly erratic) is about to implode as they put together to host a celebration celebrating his newest opus: A dazzlingly futuristic church, in-built reminiscence of their solely son, who died in an accident a few years in the past.

Among the many visitors is Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki, ambiguously winsome), with whom Solness had an adulterous fling 10 years earlier, when she was a 20-year-old pupil of his. Again then, Elena, regardless of being an avowed feminist, had responded to the revelation of the affair by making an attempt to destroy Mathilde’s fame. Mathilde has since written a novel concerning the dalliance, and Elena — who's about to file for divorce — affords to publish it out of spite.

This sordid story is thrashed out over two emotionally charged hours, in a register that toggles uneasily between soapy cliché and cynical sass. (There are a number of quips concerning the phallic symbolism of tall buildings.)

The language is laboriously up to date, with references to secure areas, energy imbalances, cancel tradition, reclaiming narratives, slut-shaming, and even “the present witch-huntery of the second.” That these phrases are delivered in tones of figuring out weariness solely attracts additional consideration to the script’s overdetermined bagginess. And the romantic quarrels function a number of the most stilted and shopworn dialogue that anybody will hear on a West Finish stage this 12 months.

Lumbered with such materials, it's straightforward to grasp the underwhelming drabness of McGregor’s efficiency. Making his first look on a British stage in 17 years, he evinces neither the gravitas of an egotistical doyen nor the frenzied desperation of a lovestruck idiot. His ardour — for work and ladies alike — is fully summary, and positive aspects no buy on our feelings.

The vibe of implausibility isn’t helped by Solness’s youthful skilled rival, Ragnar, who's performed by an orange-haired David Ajala in an exaggeratedly camped-up type, for no good purpose. Whilst he’s seducing Elena’s private assistant, Kaia (Mirren Mack), he’s a sashaying caricature. To land, this might demand a glowing, Wildean wit — and there may be treasured little of that right here.

It's largely because of Fleetwood that the present holds collectively in any respect. Her Elena is poised in her indignation, briefly pitiable when she makes a determined cross at Ragnar, and nearly motherly when she urges Mathilde to just accept that no long-term good can come of her involvement with Solness. And he or she is humorous. Bursting in on Solness and Mathilde throughout an heated set-to, she emits a brusque “sorry,” which will get a giant snigger.

Decided to show he’s nonetheless as virile as ever, Solness climbs the tower of the newly constructed church, solely to succumb to vertigo. In Ibsen’s play, Mathilde had egged him on on this catastrophically pointless gesture, however on this telling he does it on his personal. Elena has seen the sunshine, and checked out. This serves the manufacturing’s political agenda however effaces the play’s complexity and saps it of tragedy. Solness’s turmoil is relegated to a banal midlife disaster; he’s only a common lech.

When Ibsen wrote “The Grasp Builder,” he was in his 60s and had not too long ago struck up a relationship with an 18-year-old Viennese girl, Emilie Bardach, whereas on trip in Austria. The unique play explores, in an unforgiving spirt of self-criticism, the absurd predicament wherein Ibsen discovered himself. Nobody may sensibly accuse him of romanticizing the scenario. It's considerably unlucky that, in in search of to proper a nonexistent improper, McGregor, 54, and Grandage, 62 — working in collaboration with a a lot youthful feminine author — have erected a folly of their very own.