MATHILDE AND THE BUILDER (can he repair it? Probably not)
The set is glassand towering, city-chic backed by reeds and seashore; the figures earlier than us NYC glamorous, even after they wander out for a dip within the chilly Atlantic in sensible beachwear. Ewan McGregor’s architect Henry is tousled, midlife good-looking, Kate Fleetwood as his writer is girlboss-slinky; into their ambit come Elizabeth Debicki as Mathilde, tall and pale as a lily in acres of wide-legged mattress-ticking-stripey trousers, and David Ajala as a rival architect Ragnar. He’s unspeakably cool too, with orange hair and a seaside shirt. Only Mirren Mack’s little Kaia the PA appears like anybody you may run into offstage, ever. Overall. as a pure upmarket-fantasy spectacle it makes The Devil Wears Prada up the highway look positively drab.
But focus: that is an echo of Ibsen and a meditation on the issues of feminine empowerment. Lila Raicek is a seasoned screenwriter – Netflix, Gossip Girl, all that – and it exhibits, typically in a great way. For she retains it clear and retains it shifting (Michael Grandage directs). Her characters are drawn with a agency hand , her themes specific. There’s a way of virtually focus-group focusing on about it: Henry is an English star architect residing within the Hamptons, rebuilding a 19c Whalers’ chapel, his spouse Elena a profitable writer who fought via the glass ceiling, his rival Ragnar an “influencer architect” contemporary again from jetting betwen Nigeria and Norway whereas designing an eco-retreat made, presumably, out of seaweed (there are, early on, some good laughs). The host couple – who we quickly be taught are l scarred by the loss of a kid ten years earlier – are about about to launch the pyramical glazed chapel at a celebration for financiers and opinion-formers, so the viewers, Netflix-style, is reassured that there shall be strife and fireworks within the second half.
Anyway, no sooner does Henry clap eyes on Mathilde than he’s frozen in astonished reminiscence of her as the scholar research-assistant with whom he had an inappropriately intense – although technically chaste – relationship simply on the time he misplaced his son. The play is described as a’dialog with” Ibsen’s Master Builder, its themes of previous sin t and metaphors of structure up to date to discover some extra trendy points going through girls. And, much less intensely, their baffled menfolk.
The most fascinating of those points is Mathilde’s: because the outdated story comes out, it turns into clear that her adoration of her older “Master” has marked her life since, made her want the knowledge of being “seen” and “owned” by an older man : in her personal phrases, it ruined her emotionally in addition to ruining her schooling and repute. Ibsen on the time was whelmed in guilt a couple of youthful lady: it’s fairly intelligent of Raicek to maneuver the main target off male neediness onto the emotions and powers of the females involved. For Elena has points too: hating center age, her grief unresolved, unable to bear extra youngsters, feeling ignored by Henry , undervalued at work and in love with Ragnar however unaware that younger Kaia is having an affair with him. Henry has his issues too, not least that he believes that he has been frozen in unfeeling ever because the passage of depth with Mathilde. Actually, the funniest second within the play is when Mathilde recites verbatim a letter he despatched her on the finish of their romance , about how she should come to search out him in ten years’ time: the poor bloke can’t bear in mind any of it. But ultimately, amid an rising flurry of architectural metaphors about house and lightweight, he broadcasts that he’s determined to go for the type of love that has extra mild than darkness in it. In different phrases, you would say, much less guilt.
I loved its crafty chinese-box construction, as throughout the Ibsenian thought of a previous betrayal and connection one other extra harmful echo is created: Elena has learn younger Mathildes unpublished novel about that intense master-student relationship way back, and can publish it and brazenly disgrace Henry, offered the poor woman she had “slutshamed” outs herself, and admits it’s autobiographical for good PR. Says multiple would love about trendy publishing, that.
The play’s at its greatest at at its fieriest, a number of the late rows between Henry and Elena reaching nearly Who’s-afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf ranges. Kate Fleetwood is incredible, steals the present; Elizabeth Debicki mournfully watchable, Ajala’s Ragnar an amusing prat. Ewan McGregor, although, appears oddly uncomfortable all through, presumably due to the numerous pretentious traces he’s given and the variety of secrets and techniques that need to be clunked out. But his remaining deadly climb via architectural glassware is a effective theatrical second, as soon as each character has on some degree or one other betrayed the others. Even little Kaia.
Box workplace. wyndhamstheatre.co.uk. to. 12 July
Rating 3.
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