If you are my Nana you might wanna skip this one.
I have many thoughts on this adaptation of The Master Builder… almost none of them are good.
To begin, I would like to mention a few things I did enjoy: costuming, lighting, stage design. It would be unfair to negate the great work of those behind the scenes by grouping them in with the things I hate. Moreover, I felt like the costume director was the only one who understood the play. Specifically, the wardrobe for the women and Ragnar revealed so much about their character and motives. Ragnar was fun and eccentric. His colorful looks indicate his new rise to success (both in a “he’s new money” and a “he’s in touch with modern society” way). His clothes are rebellious, pushing boundaries just like him. Hilda was intentionally dressed to seem innocent and soft, highlighting her as being at the bottom of a power imbalance. The best dressed by far though was Elena. Her bold, green, sexy dress showed how jealous she was, and how badly she craved attention from those around her.
Now for what I hated: everything else. The scripting was terrible. Everything felt like self-insert fanfiction. The chemistry between the characters was not there. Their sex served absolutely no purpose. The only thing that made it bearable was the man in front of me and his ad-libs. His “whot” when he put his hand between her thighs made me laugh for 5 minutes. The story felt so dissatisfying. It kept building up to a point just to ruin the development. The overarching theme of girlboss feminism was ruined by the unbelievable nature of Henry’s evilness, the fact that none of the women understand the other isn’t the enemy, and the fact that they turn Elena into the crazy and obsessed wife trope. Also, truly I do not think I have been more indifferent to a main character. They took such a manipulative driving force and made him pathetic. By the end of the play, I did not care about how the character’s stories ended, as long as it was the end (and I could leave).
If anyone would like more thoughts on the reasons I hated this play, I would be happy to share.
In other news, the Sky Garden was fun.
Theatre in London U of A 