My Master Builder review – it's the women who shine in Ewan McGregor's West End return

It is a striking set: the towering skeleton of a modern architectural masterpiece dominates the stage, partially obscuring the sand and sea further ahead. This imposing structure – the Hamptons home of a wealthy couple – looms like a cage ready to release its secrets. 

And tonight, we are given the chance to enter their unhappy world. We have an invite to the party.

My Master Builder is a new West End play with a stellar line-up: Ewan McGregor as a scruffy, fading rockstar of an architect, Kate Fleetwood as his formidable and vengeful wife, and Elizabeth Debicki as his former mistress and student pining for him a decade after their affair.

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Alongside a small but strong supporting cast, the trio navigates complex power dynamics and resentment over the course of one night – in which Debicki’s Mathilde, a young and beautiful writer who specialises in architecture, has been invited to a party at the couple’s home and is used as a pawn in their tempestuous marital relationship.

Mingling party guests, clearly having a far more enjoyable time than the main characters, whisper and watch with delight and occasional horror as the evening unfolds.

It is not quite an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder or even a translation for the modern day, but it borrows from the plot and themes. In playwright Lila Raicek and director Michael Grandage’s take on the 1892 play, the women seize back control – or at least they think they do. 

There is rarely a conversation between the women that is not about a man. McGregor’s washed-up architect Henry Solness has the first and last line of the play. And each sacrifices something of themselves as they seek to destroy each other and as they shape and fold themselves into a man’s life.

Perhaps the most tragic character is Mathilde, whose life was left in pieces in the immediate aftermath of her affair with her professor, while he continued to thrive and seemingly forgot her and the promises they shared. She is played with vulnerability and occasional fierceness by Debicki, reminiscent of her Diana in The Crown. The power dynamic remains – with Solness using phrases like “good girl” to keep charge.

My Master Builder, in its structure, is classically Ibsen – but what you might not expect is that it is also raucously funny. Fleetwood has brilliant comic timing as the bullish Elena, and David Ajala gets roars of laughter as Ragnar, her camp love interest – who is actually in a relationship with her assistant Kaja, played with warmth by Sex Education’s Mirren Mack.

There is no doubt audiences will come to see Ewan McGregor back on stage for the first time in 17 years – people are lined up outside the theatre to get his autograph as has become commonplace when celebrities perform on the West End – and the star delivers an animated performance.

But it is the women in My Master Builder who shine – quite literally, as they are dressed in shimmering ball gowns while the men wear chinos and beige shirts.

Fleetwood is especially brilliant and has the most complex task on her hands in playing Elena. Her character is an avowed feminist who has made a name for herself as a publisher, but yet she sought to destroy the reputation of the 20-year-old student with whom her husband had an adulterous fling – and then brought her back into their lives years later for reasons which are not entirely clear, perhaps even to her.

But still, there are moments we pity Elena, when she is raw and vulnerable, struggling with the weight of age and grief. She understands she is wrong in blaming Mathilde for the failure of her marriage, but she still seeks to punish her and is similarly cruel to her assistant Kaia, because they are both young and beautiful and have the attention of men.

Some may not forgive the littering of architectural metaphors (although Ibsen got away with it on more than one occasion) or the somewhat cliched ending, but My Master Builder gives audiences an emotionally-charged two hours and a couple of belly laughs.

It is also, perhaps, the only invite many of us will get to a party in the Hamptons.

My Master Builder is showing at Wyndham’s Theatre, London, until 12 July.

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