STAGE REVIEW : Ibsen’s ‘Master Builder’ Lacks Building Block

It’s easy to see why Henrik Ibsen provokes such schizophrenic responses. He’s one of those turn-of-the-century writers that modern directors and actors profess to admire yet keep safely at arm’s length. Most translations of Ibsen are hopelessly ponderous and many of the hidebound Victorian values aired in his plays become increasingly distant as we approach the 21st Century.

Except for his extraordinary “Peer Gynt,” and the feminist “A Doll’s House” and “Hedda Gabler,” still trotted out with something close to regularity, most of Ibsen’s work suffers from reverential neglect. “The Master Builder,” which Tony Randall and his National Actors Theatre have resurrected at the Belasco Theatre as the third production of their initial season, is one of the seldom-attempted plays. But in this taut new translation by Johan Fillinger, a Norwegian stage director who has worked in England, Western Europe and Canada, the needs of the theatrical and linguistic idioms are well served and more than adequately met.

This production, clocking in at a brisk two hours and 10 minutes, has a welcome clarity. It is closer in mood to Chekhov than Ibsen, more aligned with introspective examination of character than clinical dissection. From the chilly vastness of David Jenkins’ uncomfortable Victorian rooms (utilitarian sets, admirable for their achievement under obvious budgetary constraints) to the arresting performance of Lynn Redgrave as Alvine Solness, the master builder’s desolate wife, and the triumphant one of Madeleine Potter as passionate Hilde Wangel, the young woman who shakes up their lives, this “Master Builder” had a calculable potential for success. It provides all the right elements but the pivotal one.

Without a Halvard Solness of compelling stature and exorbitant hubris at its heart, the trappings of the drama go more or less for nought. In ancient Greek terms, this is a play about the arrogance of power, the implosion of empire under the pressure of massive egomania. Solness is a man consumed by ambition who has reached the pinnacle by holding down everyone around him.

He may, or not, have engineered his first professional break at terrible expense to his wife. As a charismatic womanizer, a lion isolated in his climb to the peak of his profession, he is belatedly caged by guilt and obsessed with fears. There is guilt for the wife he has repeatedly betrayed and the offspring he believes he helped to kill. There is fear of the up-and-coming talent nipping at his heels, and, ironically, there is a new and symbolic fear of heights.

How much of this director Tony Randall attempted to extract from Earle Hyman, entrusted with playing the towering Halvard at the Belasco, is impossible to assess. What’s clear is that he failed. Hyman’s Halvard is an agitated man, not a tormented one. His performance is preoccupied with misplaced minutiae. It squanders its energy on bursts of uneasy laughter and meaningless gesture, as he picks up and puts down objects without motivation or reason. For all of Halvard’s references to the possibility of his own incipient madness, Hyman delivers only a shallow nervousness that seems to belong more to the actor than the character. He is oddly absent from the play.

This void at the center doesn’t leave the production many places to go, despite the substantial contributions of Patrick Tull as sympathetic Dr. Herdal, John Beal’s anguish as the ailing and deposed Knut Brovik, Peter McRobbie’s simmering fury as his chafing son Ragnar, and Maryann Plunkett’s simpering Kaja, the vapid secretary engaged to Ragnar but smitten with Halvard.

Worst of all, Hyman’s weakness deprives Potter of the right fencing partner. Potter’s Hilde is the personification of fearless, freewheeling youth, the very thing that most terrifies and attracts the retrenching Halvard. Her brash and glowing iconoclast, who comes to taunt the master with claims of an undelivered promise and stays to befriend his desperate wife, is an ardent performance in a vacuum.

There is no one home to play against, except for the still and translucent Redgrave, whose cracked voice and agonized silences are the sentinels of her pain. The richest and most satisfying scenes in the production are the ones between these two women, especially the autumnal scenes in the garden. Alvine’s hands, sensing liberation, flutter over Hilde’s like the helpless flappings of a wounded bird, and all the ice that has built up and choked her abused spirit starts to melt at the touch of the younger woman’s flame.

Had Randall been able to release this kind of complexity and depth in the actor playing the title role, he might have had that “robust conscience” Hilde keeps badgering Halvard about. He also might have had what a national theater, however self-appointed, requires to legitimize its aspirations: a memorable production of a major classic.

This “Master Builder” isn’t it.

‘The Master Builder’ Maryann Plunkett: Kaja Fosli John Beal: Knut Brovik Peter McRobbie: Ragnar Brovik Earle Hyman: Halvard Solness Lynn Redgrave: Mrs. Alvine Solness Patrick Tull: Dr. Herdal Madeleine Potter: Hilde Wangel

A National Actors Theatre revival of the play by Henrik Ibsen. Executive producer Manny Kladitis. Director Tony Randall. Translation Johan Fillinger. Sets David Jenkins. Lights Richard Nelson. Costumes Patricia Zipprodt. Sound T. Richard Fitzgerald. Production stage manager Glen Gardali. Stage manager Joe McGuire.