The Master Builder, Albery Theatre, London

With the Haymarket's production of Brand, and now The Master Builder, those who love Ibsen - in other words, truth and humanity - have the rare chance of seeing not only two superb productions of his work but two brilliant depictions of the lonely artist, young and old. Indeed, Patrick Stewart's Halvard Solness, on his entrance in long black coat and high white collar, resembles another Brand.

Like Brand, Solness grants no comfort to the dying who will not defer to him. Unlike Brand, though, Solness has no icy religion as a cloak for his egomania. One of those men who thrives by drinking the blood of others, and then complains that everyone around him is anaemic, Solness needs fresh young sacrifices to resist madness (though he seems almost to welcome it as affirmation of his genius) and death. But his terror is stoked by the knowledge that he deserves punishment for his selfishness and cruelty at the same time as he continues to indulge in them.

This play contains two of the most sublimely insensitive moments in all literature: when Solness abruptly dismisses his infatuated secretary, to whom he has doled out affection as inducement or reward, he does so in front of her younger, prettier replacement; and when he has installed his latest Platonic mistress in a room built for the children who died in infancy, when he tells his wife: "we found a use for the nursery after all."

Anthony Page's detailed, domestic production makes a nice complement, both in style and strengths, to Adrian Noble's spare, stark Brand. This play is set in a progressive fin-de-siècle Scandinavian house that looks sturdy enough to move into. There were delighted gasps and applause at Hildegard Bechtler's bisque walls, panelled cupboards, and tasteful taupe upholstery. (No evidence, of course, in the office, drawing room, or garden - next to a corner of a house that resembles a great cliff - of a feminine touch.) The ensemble work is far better than in the earlier play. Playing Solness's defeated wife, Sue Johnston has the bearing of a dignified drunk, combining lofty disapproval with timorous, hesitant entreaty. Lisa Dillon's Hilda Wangel, the girl who appears to be Solness's salvation yet is his nemesis, is convincing in her innocent, childish intensity. In the role of the secretary, Katherine Manners shows us, subtly but piercingly, the parched fervour of those who live on crumbs.

Patrick Stewart, in the more complex but less physical of the two title roles (he hardly stands up; Ralph Fiennes's Brand never sits down) is good in the severe, embittered passages and very good in the king-without-his-crown-on ones: his gracious tolerance of Hilda's impertinence conveys even better than his hauteur the builder's chilly superiority. But when Solness confesses to Hilda his guilt and fear, Stewart remains too unbending. His voice has the right gravelly but attractive authority, but one feels his performance is composed of a series of inflections and gestures rather than being animated from within.

Three small complaints: a sound system that makes a nest of birds sound as if they're trapped in one of the boxes, and puts an offstage voice at the rear of the stalls, is distracting and silly; John Logan's fine translation begins, teeth-grindingly, with a character saying, "You're feeling badly today" (no-one who saw A Letter to Three Wives will ever forget Kirk Douglas, playing an English teacher, leaping with arms outstretched, fingers wiggling, at a pompous woman who has just said, "I feel so badly for you", shouting, "No, this is how you feel badly!"); and the wreath that the master builder risks his life to carry to the top of the tower is far too big. Considering the dual symbolism of that circle of greenery (the other is funereal), its size seems not only overstated but indecent.

To 17 August (020-7369 1730)