Is Culture Being Ideologically Stifled?
A few thoughts on watching My Master Builder at Wyndham's theatre in London this summer.
At the start of July, I had the opportunity to go see the Wyndham Theatre's production of My Master Builder in London. Adapted from Ibsen by playwright Lila Raicek, the piece saw Ewan McGregor make his first stage appearance after eleven long years (and seventeen years in London), joined, among others, by the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, best-known perhaps for her role of Princess Diana in the Netflix series The Crown. The stellar cast had attracted a full house of audience, and the experience proved quite memorable in many ways, not least for the fact that the history of Wyndham’s theatre house at the West End goes back to the late 19th century. It was fun to think of all who have passed through its doors and halls throughout the many years and the art that has been created there.
As I’ve never really been a great connoisseur of theatre, I wouldn’t want to start making any far-reaching conclusions about the performance, but will instead try to reflect on something more general that experience made me think of.
Still, to be fair, I could say I really enjoyed McGregor’s stage presence, the integrity of his performance, the conviction in the manner he rendered his role in. I appreciated the blurred line between entering and acting – the performance essentially began before the lights had dimmed in the hall. I also liked that the performance began with a kind of a philosophical presentation of its theme before the narrative would really unfold – a kind of a meditation on the meaning of architecture (or ultimately, any creative effort), its permanence, or transience. But I also enjoyed the bold and ingenious stage design which managed to encompass emptiness and expanse, much in line with the play’s understanding of architecture as an art of disclosure rather than construction. And this is even beside the masterful lighting – illumining two embracing people in the depths of the stage as if in an ultra-sharp overexposed photograph, for example, seemed a remarkable feat.
What I found far more puzzling was, however, the reaction of much of the audience. For even though the play was a drama, hence a work exploring the tragic complexities and struggles of human life, the reaction in the audience would have had me believe at times I was watching a light-hearted comedy. The two hours were thus spattered with splurges of laughter for nearly anything from the protagonist asking his lover to remind him of their shared past, to his excusing his absence from home by his devotion to his art. And in comparison to my past experiences of theatre, this came to me as a big surprise. There is, of course, a measure of situational humour there in Raicek’s play, and even a tragic moment can be at times be a mirror for the audience to laugh at our occasional ludicrousness as human beings, but this laughter felt to me of a different kind. I would best describe as release, or a getaway from the questions the scene was actually been asking – how the conundrums and pain of life can sometimes feel insurmountable, how our choices are hardly ever unconstrained, how to approach aging without feeling despair, etc. Or perhaps, I wondered, it was an escape route from the play not really corresponding to the expected narrative of designated villains and victims – and facing life as a course with no definite answers?
The same seemed reflected in many of the reviews as well. Arifa Akbar of The Guardian suggested McGregor came short of the narcissism required of his character (although why exactly would that be required of him, I couldn’t tell) and was upset with the play awarding its central role to a male character. The reviewer was also surprised to find McGregor ‘boyishly (i.e. inappropriately) earnest’, for the character is an ‘older’ (i.e. middle-aged) man, and felt confused that ‘he seems genuinely in love’. The review eventually claimed the main pillar of the story is not its protagonist, but his wife, played spiritedly by actress Kate Fleetwood, who, then again, looked to me the only character who didn’t really develop in the course of the story. Another review by Ben Lawrence in the differently-tilted The Telegraph opined that classics should be treated with more respect and not modernised to suit a contemporary audience, which felt a little difficult to agree with as well, for why wouldn’t existing art serve as groundwork for new creation? However, there seemed to be an agreement amongst many of the reviewers that the new play was first and foremost about sexual power dynamics of relationships – which, though a fashionable idea, would make us rather one-dimensional as human beings, I felt.
The art of asking questions vs propounding an ideology
Just a few days later I sat at the European Literature Night in Amsterdam and heard its guests discuss how political contemporary literature is or should be – with many of the answers tilting towards the idea that being engaged in political or social activism is actually the very crux of writing and culture. That much of this had the ring of just choosing the right ‘tribe’ (amazed, for example, how one could possibly choose the conservative view), left me once again similarly puzzled as had the reviewers of My Master Builder. For to expect culture to offer unambiguous answers or designations, I thought, was to actually wish its demise – as culture’s vitality has always depended far more on its ability to pose questions and to leave the audience pondering, or at best, perhaps, even in awe of the questions, rather than on offering them handrails for survival. Even historically, culture yoked to a political angle has, first and foremost, characterised totalitarian societies, where even culture, and hence the very nature of our humanity, has often been a political matter – be in the former Soviet Union or further down the history lane.
Considering that, and contrary to his critics, I found McGregor’s interpretation of his role more than fair, as it was displaying and examining a human being in both his strength and weakness, exposing imperfection as an inevitable part of human experience. And posing a query to the meaning of this in the face of such awareness. One could even say the performance looked the very antidote to blind idealism – confirming that even the imperfect can give birth to something extraordinary and timeless, or something ‘touched’, if one is lucky. (That the building inaugurated in the play is a church, and a seamen’s church at that, feels particularly apt in this context.)
A creator, like McGregor’s architect, can only strive to become a vessel, hoping to convey a bit of the glory of being alive despite one’s own innate ruggedness. Replacing content with ideology would never achieve that goal.
The shows of My Master Builder have by now concluded and can hence no longer be recommended. But keeping an eye out for new invigorating work in the London theatre scene feels worthwhile nonetheless. Perhaps even in an audience with fewer predispositions than I seemed to chance upon in July.