Greg Hicks as Halvard Solness [Alex Brenner Photography]

AFTER a slow and rather mannered start, Mehmet Ergen’s production of Ibsen’s The Master Builder (in David Edgar’s adaptation) settles into a tense, beguiling exploration of creative ambition, guilt and the fear of being usurped by the next generation.

Celebrated architect Halvard Solness (a gaunt, ruthless Greg Hicks) has learned everything on the job. Lacking formal training, he is threatened by the expertise of the young architect Ragnar (Ryan Wichert), who works for him. He manipulates his bookkeeper Kaja (Jade Williams) – engaged to Ragnar yet devoted to Solness – to keep the young man tied to his practice, under the nose of his wife Aline (Sally George).

Solness fears and resents the power and agency of youth. Hilde (an assured Louisa Binder) serves as the catalyst for change turning up at his house unannounced. She claims that 10 years earlier, when she was a girl, Solness kissed her, called her his princess, and promised her a kingdom. There’s a fairy-tale quality to the way she calls him Master Builder, plays on his superstitions and insists on what she believes is her right.

Ergen draws out the psychological-thriller elements, probing Hilde’s motives and suggesting a more pointed game of control: that she has come to claim the promise he made her and to confront his past behaviour. Solness is both suspicious and flattered by her attentions, as she urges him to climb the tower of his new home to lay a celebratory wreath, despite his vertigo.

Robert Innes Hopkins evokes the architect’s studio with white model houses mounted on exposed brick, while the bare timber frame and skeletal branches that overhang the stage add a Scandi chill.

Until November 21
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