Tag Archives: Richard Kent

MY MASTER BUILDER

★★★

Wyndham’s Theatre

MY MASTER BUILDER

Wyndham’s Theatre

★★★

“Director Michael Grandage moves the action swiftly along, although there are no real obstacles in the script that is fast flowing and fresh”

Lila Raicek’s “My Master Builder” is not a translation of Ibsen’s ‘The Master Builder’. Nor is it an adaptation. But it is in no way a new play either even though it has its own, very contemporary feel to it. It’s a play about the dynamics of power, and Raicek successfully brings the female characters out of the shadows that Ibsen originally cast them in. Elena, the wife (an assured and seductively fiery Kate Fleetwood), is very much the co-star alongside architect Ewan McGregor’s starry status as the architect Henry. All the characters are on an equal footing in the story of a fractured marriage. A couple that, on the surface, have it all – but beneath the glossy surface grief at the loss of their son appears to be the only foundation holding them together. Played out in real time, it is July 4th, in the present day. Henry is unveiling his latest architectural triumph while his wife is getting the party in full swing. The arrival of former student Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki) triggers memories, stirs up past desires and sets the wheels of tragedy in motion. By interval the blue touch paper is well and truly lit. The second act will provide the fireworks.

Henry – the successful and eminent architect – is the architect of his own fate, and of those around him. But this interpretation shifts the weight onto the women. Feminine power is the keynote, yet it strikes a little out of tune here, not quite finding its pitch. The vitriol that Fleetwood invests in Elena’s anger lacks justification. We would be on her side more if we could see the grief more than the righteousness. In fact, with all the characters, there is a sense of it being ‘all about me’, and it is hard to warm to these selfish personalities. The exceptions are David Ajala, as Henry’s protégé Ragnar and Mirren Mack’s Kaia. The couple share a humility that the others should definitely take note of.

Director Michael Grandage moves the action swiftly along, although there are no real obstacles in the script that is fast flowing and fresh. The central theme of the older man’s infatuation with a younger woman is not so fresh, however, and the handling is clumsy. Debicki’s Mathilde is a striking figure, but we are in constant confusion as to where her loyalties lie. We share Henry’s sentiment when he repeatedly declares her to be too beautiful to be real, but McGregor’s words are just as unreal. We just cannot believe most of what he says. Whilst the acting can’t be faulted, the mood swings and the shifts from realism to histrionics hinder the delivery.

Richard Kent’s set evokes the modernism of Henry’s visionary architecture, peeling it back to reveal the watery backdrop of the Hamptons in New York. The shoehorned references to Henry’s vertigo are vivid signposts to the tragic finale, even to those unfamiliar with the Ibsen original. Raicek’s play stands alone, though, so no familiarity is needed. Apparently semi-autobiographical, it is easy to follow, with just enough twists to satisfy. Set within the confines of a party there are nods to Thomas Vinterberg’s ‘Festen’, or Moira Buffini’s ‘Dinner’, but without much of the darkness and the suspense. Things fall apart too quickly, and the manipulations of the subplots are lost in the cascade. More could be made of Elena’s threat of making or breaking Mathilde’s debut novel, depending on whether she becomes an ally or remains a rival for her husband’s love. The punch of Raicek’s narrative is too often softened by platitudes. ‘Men do so little to be worshipped’ complains Elena, ‘while women have to do so much just to succeed’.

There is much talk of the master bedroom, and the master guest room in which past, present and potential lovers can retreat; but the play falls short of being a masterpiece. “My Master Builder” does have the power, though, to keep us gripped. What stands out more is its portrayal of the sense of loss. These are characters that have achieved much and gained more than they could want, but the losses – of love and of life – topple the lives they have built for themselves. We just wish we could care more, and sympathise with the sense of self-destruction built into them, but the piece needs a stronger foundation to truly hold it together.



MY MASTER BUILDER

Wyndham’s Theatre

Reviewed on 30th April 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Johan Persson

 


 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

NEXT TO NORMAL | ★★★★★ | June 2024
KING LEAR | ★★★★ | October 2023
OKLAHOMA! | ★★★★ | February 2023
LIFE OF PI | ★★★★★ | November 2021

 

 

MY MASTER BUILDER

MY MASTER BUILDER

MY MASTER BUILDER

BIRDSONG

★★

Alexandra Palace Theatre

BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

★★

“The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war”

Alexandra Palace Theatre is the final venue for Birdsong, after its long regional UK tour.

Alexandra Palace Theatre is London’s oldest new theatre, originally built in 1875, falling into disrepair and eventually re-opening in 2018 after a major refurbishment bringing the huge auditorium back to life in arrested decay. It is a big theatre to fill and with a lot of the seating on the flat it is lucky the stage is high. The slopping seats are a long way back from the stage in this vast space. But it is beautiful and majestic.

Now to Birdsong… This production marks the thirtieth anniversary of Sebastian Faulks’s epic and searing WWI novel – and fifteen years since the West End premiere of the stage adaptation by Rachel Wagstaff.

After seven months on the road, this current production is tired and needs to be put to sleep. The cast, most playing several characters with several dodgy accents, have been allowed to stretch out their lines and pauses – it needed desperate tightening by the director Alastair Whatley, and at over three hours this production is too long.

The opening scene is in present day Amiens, France, with a young man looking for a WWI soldier’s grave. It then moves to the bourgeois charm of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford (James Esler) is a guest staying with René Azaire (Sargon Yelda), his wife Isabelle (Charlie Russell) and his teenage daughter Lisette (Gracie Follows) to learn about Azaire’s textile factory. The factory is failing, the workers are rebelling, the Azaire’s marriage is toxic, and Stephen starts a passionate affair with the unhappy Isabelle. The affair is discovered and Act One closes with them running away together.

Act Two opens in the 1916 trenches in France, with hammy acting and singing Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, a music hall favourite, sung by the sappers and infantrymen of the British Army, covered in mud and showing their camaraderie. We meet various characters including Jack Firebrace (Max Bowden) a sapper who digs the dangerous tunnels under the battlefields, and learns of his young son John’s death, in a letter from home. Stephen is now a lonely, cold-hearted lieutenant, who dissects dead rats. In flash backs we discover that Isabelle had left him. Firebrace saves Stephen’s life when one of the tunnels collapses in an explosion. The act ends in silhouette as the soldiers climb up the ladders out of the trenches into No Man’s Land and certain death.

Act Three in the tail end of the war, Stephen and Firebrace are again trapped underground. This time Stephen desperately tries to save Firebrace’s life, but he dies before a German Jewish soldier breaks through – it is the end of the war and peace is above ground. The play bookends back to the present day and we discover that the young man searching for the soldier’s grave has been looking for Jack Firebrace’s grave; and he is in fact John (yes named after Jack’s dead son), Stephen’s grandson.

The set by Richard Kent, works well to create multiple locations including the claustrophobic underground tunnels. The lighting tonight was maybe too dark and there was continuous smoke billowing, which worked for the factory and battle scenes but not for the gentle French countryside and house scenes.

The theatre acoustics are flat, meaning the cast are heavily miked with individual head mikes and the sound is overly loud. The microphones also pick up the fact that the maid’s shoes do not have rubbered soles, and on this stage her noisy clackety clack steps were heard throughout, especially when she exited stage left and ran round backstage to make a quick re-entrance stage right.

There was no chemistry between lovers Isabelle and Stephen, and in their graphic sex scene Stephen is naked, as any ardent lover should be. However, I was left wondering where his mike pack might be hidden.

Birdsong ends with the sounds of the soaring titular birdsong.

The play is a streamlined version of the book, but this production does not bring out the pain and inhumanity of war, or dying and surviving in a living hell, nor the horrific psychological effects of war.

Read the book.



BIRDSONG

Alexandra Palace Theatre

Reviewed on 28th February 2025

by Debbie Rich

Photography by Pamela Raith

 

 


 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

AN INSPECTOR CALLS | ★★★★ | September 2024
THE GLASS MENAGERIE | ★★★★ | May 2024
A CHRISTMAS CAROL: A GHOST STORY | ★★★★ | November 2023
TREASON THE MUSICAL | ★★★ | November 2023
BUGSY MALONE | ★★★★★ | December 2022

 

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG

BIRDSONG