Ralph Fiennes has done it again!
Following his success playing the massive part of Jack Tanner in Man and Superman, at The National Theatre, he is now wowing
us as Halvard Solness in David Hare’s
new adaptation of Ibsen’s The Master
Builder. He really is a tour de
force and stands up there amongst the great actors of recent times.
The Master Builder is a story of a self-made man who has
become increasingly frightened of being displaced by the young. Due to his successful career as an architect,
Solness is now a dominant figure in the town and has no wish for his assistant,
Ragnar Brovik, to take over the business, or, indeed, set up on his own. The architect’s marriage to his wife Aline is
strained due to the tragedy of them losing their twin babies in a fire in his
wife’s beloved childhood home. She is
becoming increasingly convinced that her husband is suffering from mental
health issues, so continually summons the family doctor, Herdal, to visit
him. When a young girl called Hilde
Wangel arrives unannounced, persuading him to remember that they had met ten
years earlier when she was just fourteen-years-old, Solness grows progressively
infatuated. On that occasion he had made
advances towards her and promised that ten years on they would meet again and
he would offer her a kingdom. This fey,
otherworldly young creature has come to claim these ‘castles in the sky’ but
real life gets in the way. Refusing to believe that Solness has a morbid fear
of heights, she goads him into climbing the high tower of his latest creation,
to devastating effect.
That
Solness is a troubled soul, with many issues, is never in any doubt. Various happenings in his life have given him
the belief that he only has to wish for something to happen in order for it to
come about. In his mind, this is a gift
bestowed on him from God and that he has been ordained to spend the remainder
of his career building churches. Hilde,
in believing the fairytale promise Solness made her all those years ago,
becomes his enabler and continually eggs him on. As the story progresses, we are privy to his
confused inner world and symbolism begins to replace the realism of the earlier
scenes. It is very much a play of these two
different styles and all credit to David
Hare’s excellent adaptation and Ralph
Fiennes equally excellent portrayal that the whole production gels so
beautifully. Oh and let’s not forget the
third piece of the puzzle that fits it all together, the remarkable directing
skills of Matthew Warchus.
The
remaining cast is no slouch either and I particularly enjoyed the performances
of the American Linda Emond as Aline
and Australian Sarah Snook as
Hilde. Their accents are pretty much
spot on and Aline is very effecting in the final two acts, when she is slightly
less ‘buttoned up’. Hilde Wangel is a
difficult part to play, balancing as she has to the ethereal childlike energy
of the young woman with the sexy tease.
For the most part Sarah Snook manages
this extremely well.
The Master Builder, although written in 1893, doesn’t feel
dated, thanks to David Hare’s
interpretation. The dialogue seems very
alive and fresh and the realistic theme of an older man’s infatuation with a
young girl will always be relevant. In
fact it is thought that Hilde is based on a blend of three women, Emilie
Bardach an eighteen-year-old Viennese student with whom Ibsen had a brief
affair, Helene Raff, an acquaintance of Bardach’s and Hildur Andersen, a
ten-year-old child of friends who, at the age of twenty-seven, became his
constant companion.
This is
yet another one of Ibsen’s plays that has recently been produced which more
than honours one of the truly great playwrights.
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