Ewan McGregor’s cheating architect is undone at a Hamptons party from hell in My Master Builder

In this feminist reimagining of Ibsen’s original, the actor’s star power is outshone by his formidable co-star Kate Fleetwood

Unhappy in love: Kate Fleetwood and Ewan McGregor in ‘My Master Builder’ (Johann Persson)

Lila Raicek’s feminist reimagining of Ibsen’s The Master Builder should be obligatory viewing for the put-upon wives of TV’s Grand Designs: stuck in caravans, heavily pregnant, looking on resentfully as the camera lovingly documents their husbands’ ruinous homebuilding schemes. Here, Ewan McGregor brings serious charm to the role of the titular architect Henry Solness, but his star power is entirely outshone by Kate Fleetwood’s formidable acting chops as his furious wife Elena, bent on bringing his dreams crashing down to the ground.

“I can’t stand another evening of crusty old men w***ing on about who’s built the biggest tower,” she carps, laying the table for a swish Hamptons dinner party that’s precision-engineered to cause him maximum social embarrassment. Naturally, her husband’s biggest rival, Ragnar, is here – David Ajala brings a faintly unconvincing swagger to this self-obsessed influencer-architect, unwisely playing along with Elena’s all-too-obvious flirtations. Still more awkwardly, she’s invited Mathilde, the younger woman with whom Henry nearly destroyed his marriage over a decade ago.

Elizabeth Debicki brings the required ethereal beauty to this role, looking like a moonbeam wrapped in silver satin, but there’s prickly intelligence there, too – in Raicek’s rewrite, she’s now a journalist taking aim at men’s phallic constructions. She’s also significantly older; the character in Ibsen’s original is just 13 when the architect first kisses her.

Raicek’s writing is full of snap, vigour and provocative jokes that get the audience squirming: “I’d f*** Kafka. I’d let him lower his monstrous thorax onto my body,” Elena pronounces with offhand glee. Women get all the best lines here, making it a welcome antidote to Ibsen’s original with its long-suffering, emotionally deadened Aline and unreadable, alluring young Hilde (renamed in Raicek’s iteration as Elena and Mathilde).

Still, this relatable humour sits increasingly uncomfortably inside the oddly shaped outlines of Ibsen’s play. Raicek is fascinated by sexual power plays and the complex ways in which women betray each other and themselves. Ibsen was more interested in using his own painfully complex love life as a jumping-off point for a symbolic exploration of artistic ambition, madness, and death.

Deep waters: Elizabeth Debicki and Ewan McGregor in ‘My Master Builder’ (Johan Persson)

Here, the architect’s visionary ideas feel underexplored, while McGregor’s consistently affable performance lacks the single-minded selfishness needed for his actions to make sense. He seems like he just genuinely loves Mathilde and is utterly baffled by the scheming wife playing 3D chess with his emotions. He certainly doesn’t seem like a man who would build a bizarre pyramid-shaped construction to assuage his profound inner torment.

Director Michael Grandage and designer Richard Kent’s evocation of this play’s setting, in the moneyed Hamptons, feels a little stuffy, with an overly fussy attempt at modern architecture cluttering the stage – none of that fashionable Scandi simplicity here.

Still, Raicek’s interpretation is bracing enough to make you forget the production’s flimsier aspects. She’s a relative newcomer to writing for the stage, but she cut her teeth working on bingeable TV dramas Younger and Gossip Girl. That training shows in the way her play sweeps you along into a breezy study of a great man whose scheming wife gets the last laugh.

‘My Master Builder’ is at Wyndham’s Theatre until 12 July; mymasterbuilderplay.com