Theatre
The Master Builder (Bristol Old Vic)
The trouble with Ibsen
Christopher Edwards
It is one of the received ideas of modern criticism that public taste lags behind great art. Of course no one understands or appreciates the great masters. It takes time, or perhaps an inspired proselytising figure, or even a conspiracy of the astute `few' to lead the public to a full grasp of what they have been missing. Ibsen was misunderstood too. London, in 1893, was naturally `behind the times' as far as Modern drama was concerned. The Master Builder received run-of-the-mill vitupera- tion: `Platitudes and inanities. . . . The play is hopeless and indefensible'. The sexual suggestiveness of the encounters between the ageing but virile hero, Sol- ness, and two young ladies was deemed `unchaste'; all that talk about marauding Vikings with robust consciences and the erecting of high towers. More interesting- ly, Solness, the successful master builder, underwent a series of mysterious European identifications. In Germany he was clearly seen as representing Bismarck. In London it was Gladstone, and the play was mined for references to the Irish question. Some people even saw Solness, correctly enough, as a study of Ibsen himself, although that did little to redeem the work for them.
My own view is that public taste will never catch up with Ibsen's late plays. And, on balance, public taste is probably right. Anyone seriously interested in the history of European drama will read and try to see most of Ibsen. Once. But, duty done, how many of us spontaneously feel a strong wish again to see the fierce parables of death and resurrection that are his late plays? Or to endure their prosaic flatness (all the lyric grace is lost in translation). When do you ever find friends saying, 'I'm just in the mood for a bit of Ibsen', or catching hold of your sleeve and murmur- ing, 'How very Ibsenish'? (Chekhov is another matter entirely; so is Strindberg.) And yet. Time after time the part of Solness has attracted the greatest talents. Wolfit, Valk, Redgrave and Olivier were all drawn to his compressed vitality. Timothy West, who plays the part in this production, is certainly commanding. He has the tough physical bulk necessary to suggest that here is a man who built his monuments by hand in stone. He also has the brusque vulgarity of the energetic Great Man. But he is guilt-ridden too, and fears retribution. All this, along with a deep wish to advance himself still further, fills him with conflicting passions.
Fed up with building homes (sickened too by the pathetic lives lived inside them — here is the echo of an earlier, social reforming Ibsen), he blazes into life when he encounters the romanticism of Hilde, the young girl who sweeps through his front door. The foundation of Solness's career was the burning down of his wife's cherished family home. He was not the cause of the tragedy, but he willed it, just as he willed to his side all the many 'helpers and servers' whose aid a great man unscru- pulously exploits when building his great- ness. (The playwright's self-portrait is chil- lingly accurate here.) Timothy West's per- formance has moments of real power when these sources of feeling are tapped. He also finds unexpected touches of ironic humour.
But, much as Timothy West engages you, there is nothing he can do about the truly dire duets Ibsen composed for Sol- ness and Hilde. The role of Hilde is hard for any actress to make plausible. She is a temptress troll who must be asexual, stern and mischievous, while at the same time idolising the older man. Olwen Fouere tomboys her way through the part, turning on her heel, leaning against walls, stretch- ing out those young limbs in a stagy imitation of artless youth. Alas, she makes no impression on the part. Worse still, the dialogue between them is too expository and top-heavy with significance to have any dramatic life of its own. This is more than a local blemish. It introduces an irredeemable tiresomeness into the action from which the production never really recovers.
There are compensations, however. Sol- ness's wife, the mournful, defeated Aline, is gently transformed by Maureen O'Brien from someone faintly ridiculous into a most moving character study. The set, a sequence of tilting rectangles, plays clever- ly on Solness's sense of vertigo. And at the climax, when Solness falls from the top of the tower, the designer Sally Crabb pulls off a brilliant little spectacle that should not be spoilt by being revealed.
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