Ewan McGregor is superb as Ibsen meets Succession

My Master Builder
Wyndham’s Theatre, London, until July 12

If you want My Master Builder reviewed in just three words it’s Ibsen meets Succession. Lila Raicek has taken it upon herself to radically redesign the Norwegian playwright’s 1892 drama The Master Builder. She switches the action to the present-day Hamptons where Ewan McGregor plays an achingly trendy architect struggling to keep his career and sanity intact as his family and competitors plot against him.

His embittered wife (Kate Fleetwood) invites Mathilde (Elizabeth Debicki, the later of two Princess Dianas in The Crown) to a party and it emerges she has a sinister ulterior motive: her invitee is an ex of her husband intent on revenge.

McGregor’s missus, meanwhile, has her eyes on a rival architect – played by David Ajala – whose Speedos have also won the admiration of her assistant (Mirren Mack).

It’s a twisted climbing frame of human misery that Raicek has constructed and the actors make the most of it: McGregor is on great form – world-weary and despairing – and the women, all with their own agendas, are all magnificently brought to life.

A play about architects cries out for startlingly good sets and Richard Kent rises magnificently to the occasion, evoking sunny days at the Hamptons every bit as impressively as its central character’s vast glass towers. Michael Grandage as director gives all the talents involved the chance to shine and it makes for a uniquely satisfying night of theatre. After directing the film My Policeman and now My Master Builder, it can surely only be a matter of time before he revives My Beautiful Launderette.