Ewan McGregor, back on the stage, is the architect of his own foolishness

When a big star appears in a striking subconculated show, the obvious cynicism is – the imaginary assumption that the sheer aura of an individual talent will compensate for all defects. This again affects the head in a new version of Henrik Ibsen’s “The Master Builder”, which was opened in London on Tuesday and contains the Scottish A-Lister Ewan McGregor in the title role. In this case, it is suitable: Artistic Hybris is a central theme of Ibsen’s game from 1892, in which an aging architect fear that his strength loses his head over a fanceled young woman.

This version, “My Master Builder”, was written by the new York playwright Lila Raicek and staged by Michael Grandage. It runs until July 12th in the Wyndham Theater. Raicek’s interpretation makes its way to Ibsen’s female characters and tells the story through the lens of #metoo -but it reduces a complex piece to a tawless marital melodrama.

We are in the Hamptons, in an elegant dining room that withdraws in a landscape by the sea and the barbecues chirp consistently. (The set comes from Richard Kent.) McGregor plays Solness, a famous “starchitects”, whose moribund marriage to the publisher Elena (Kate Fleetwood, crackling more unpredictable) will implode when you prepare to organize a party that celebrates his last opus: a dazzling futuristic church that died in the memory of her only son, who died before an accident before an accident.

Among the guests is Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki, ambiguously made by the Solness 10 years earlier, when she was a 20-year-old student. At that time, even though he was a well -known feminist, Elena had reacted to the revelation of the affair by trying to destroy Mathild’s reputation. Mathilde has now written a novel about the Dalliance, and Elena – who will be submitted shortly before the divorce – offers to publish it from despite.

This dirty story is beaten up in a register in two emotionally charged hours that switched uncomfortably between soap clichés and cynical. (There are several weapons about the phallic symbolism of high buildings.)

The language is tedious, with references to safe spaces, power weights, culture, recovery of stories, sluts and even “the current witch hunters of the moment”. The fact that these terms are delivered in tones of knowledge about fatigue only directs the over -determined bag of the script to attention. And the romantic disputes contain some of the most stilted dialogue in shopping eyes, which everyone will hear on a west end this year.

With such material, it is easy to understand the overwhelming faithfulness of McGregor’s performance. He only appears on a British stage in 17 years and shows neither the gravitas of a selfish doyen nor the frenzied despair of a love stupid. His passion – for work and women equally – is completely abstract and does not receive any purchase of our emotions.

The mood of unplausibility is played by the younger professional rival of Solness, Ragnar, who is played by an orange-haired David Ajala in an exaggerated camped-up style without a good reason by an orange-colored David Ajala. Even if he seduces Elena’s personal assistant Kaia (Mirren Mack), he is a shabby caricature. To land, this would demand a sparkling, wild joke – and there is little of it here.

Fleetwood is largely thanks to the fact that the show holds together. Her Elena stands in her outrage, briefly, when she makes a desperate passport at Ragnar, and almost maternal when she asks Mathilde to accept that no long -term good can get from her participation in Solness. And it is funny. During a heated set, she burst on Solness and Mathilde, which spends a breast “sorry” what a big laughter gets.

Determined to prove that he is still as male as always, the Solness climbs the tower of the newly built church, only to succumb to dizziness. In Ibsen’s play, Mathilde had set up him in this catastrophic senseless gesture, but in this explanation that he does it alone. Elena saw and checked out the light. This serves the political agenda of production, but triggers the complexity of the piece and is looking for it from tragedy. The turbulence of Solness is referred to a banal midlife crisis. It is just a normal Lech.

When Ibsen wrote “The Master Builder”, he was in the 1960s and recently had a relationship with an 18-year-old wife, Emilie Bardach, on vacation in Austria. The original piece examines in an unforgettable spirit of self -criticism of the absurd emergency in which Ibsen was. Nobody could sensibly accuse him of romanticizing the situation. It is somewhat regrettable that McGregor (54) and Grandage, 62 – in cooperation with a much younger writer have built their own folly in order to correct an unspeakable injustice.

My master builder
Until July 12th in Wyndham’s Theater in London; mymasterbuilderplay.com.