Henrik Ibsen’s Icarus-like architect is indubitably the patrician protagonist of his play The Master Builder. The women of that play revolve around him like acolytes, from his obliging wife to an infatuated bookkeeper and, controversially, the romanticised figure of Hilda, who reminds him of “kisses” between them when he was a renowned builder and she just a child.
In Lila Raicek’s modern take, his wife – clever, accomplished and angry – is the fulcrum. Henry Solness (Ewan McGregor) is a “starchitect” and Elena Solness (Kate Fleetwood) is the head of a publishing empire who has arranged a dinner, inviting Henry’s long-estranged student, Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki), with whom he had a tryst 10 years ago, when the Solness’s young son had just died. Love then was mixed with grief. Now it is reignited when Mathilde reminds Solness of what they meant to each other, retrospectively. “All that grief and all that rapture,” says Solness, as his memories come rushing back.
