The Master Builder, Old Vic

Old Vic has had the most horribly pretentious posh audience. Noticed that already on my first visit there 6 years ago. Less of them in the 10 £ previews, but a lot of them even occupied the cheap seats

My friends and me have seen the first preview and we were not irritated at all by Sarah Snook - we actually liked her performance and were very impressed by Ralph Fiennes and Linda Emont and the set. One of my friends is an architect and she was especially interested in the creation topic. And we all like David Hare.
I find it very interesting, that Ibsen has again created totally different interesting types of women. And especially Linda Emont manages to make that woman very likeable.

I usually don't like two intervals and I would have preferred a simpler set that allowed a quicker change but I still enjoyed the whole thing and I am looking forward to my second visit in a slightly restricted view seat in the circle for the penultimate performance.

Ladies should always pee on the top floor of this theatre, never in the basement. More cubicles, and more space to queue. Sure, it's a lot of stairs, but it's worth it.

I loved Gemma Arterton too, and this is very different, but like Mr Barnaby says, it's not the Sarah Snook's fault. The overall vision here is completely different to what the Almeida did.

At the Almeida, Arterton's Hilde Wangel was the devil herself, temptation made incarnate, dancing and pirouetting like a whirling dervish, batting her eyelashes and speaking seductively, in such a way that Helen of Troy would have felt a frump in her presence.

Here, Sarah Snook's Hilde Wangel is an uptight head girl from a British Public School (and by public, I mean private), speaking deliberately enunciated received pronunciation, in a manner that suggests sexual sublimation and Freudian repression, confirmed by her awkward physical jerkiness.

Stephen Dillane's reactionary Halvard Solness grimly set about making everyone's life miserable, until he fell under the spell of pied-piper Arterton's Miss Mephistopheles.

By comparison, Ralph Fiennes' Solness is an understandable and sympathetic chap, suffering from a shared depression with his wife, making doomy gloomy jokes, based on a tragic history. When Fiennes' sad sensitive Solness encounter's Snook's wound-up Wangel, he does not encounter a supernatural siren luring him to his doom, but someone who mirrors his mental state, who catalyses his mental illness by giving it credence. Everything that happens to Solness in this play springs not from circumstances but from his own state of mind. This version of the play is only really about one thing: Halvard Solness' state of mind.

This is Hare's grubby realistic version of Ibsen, an hour longer than the Almeida's fantastical version, with the extra hour very much devoted to lengthy speeches wherein Fiennes' Solness expounds on his inner demons, burdens, history until the mystery of Ibsen is almost explained away. And it's that mysteriousness that Ibsen brings to his characters that I love the most, so I was a little disappointed, especially by the mundaneness of this prim disturbed Hilde Wangel.

Luckily, Ralph Fiennes conquers all with his towering sensitive performance. He is at the top of his game, his speeches and emotions having the ebb and flow of tides, and he managed to deeply move me, despite my resentment of this all too earthy take on the material.

Martin Hutson is very good too, with the minimal stage time his Ragnar is given.

Seen as an opportunity to witness Fiennes at his best, this is well worth going to. But I don't think this is Ibsen seen at his best, though Ibsen is still good even seen through refracted glass.

4 stars (for Fiennes)

God, old vic AWFUL audience. it's literally filled with rich people whom think they can act anyway they want. I always make a note to sneeze on them

Yes, the night I was there you could feel the whole audience react to the age gap revelation.

Would it have been that big of a deal when Ibsen was writing, though, I wonder?

It also crossed my mind that Hilda might have been making it up. She appeared to be just about as nutty as Solness. It seemed like he only admitted it to shut her up.

I've just looked on the website and have to say I'm pretty disgusted at the prices the Old Vic are charging for this. £140 for most of the stalls and dress circle, £90 for any other non-restricted view, £60 behind a pillar or miles back under the overhang so the top of the stage is cut off, £50 for side-view seats. I would have paid £60 for a decent enough seat but to charge what they say on the show page you click through before buying tickets is top non-premium price to have a "slim pillar in view" is just criminal. I realise Warchus has lost the organisation a LOT of money on his first three flops but this sort of money grabbing actually puts me off the Old Vic as an institution.

Out of interest, Baemax, when did you buy? Looks like this could be a nasty case of our old friend 'dynamic pricing'...I'm reasonably certain prices weren't this high when I looked at the site when public booking first opened.

I think they hiked all their prices at some point either when it was selling well or maybe even just this week after the reviews. Just because idiots with money to burn or as Parsley so delicately phrases it "twats" will pay £140 to see it doesn't mean it is worth that or that you should charge that much. The website lists ticket prices as.

TICKETS: £12, £16, £21, £30, £50, £60
For information regarding Premium Seats and VIP Packages please call the box office.

The ever reliable Theatremonkey has a price plan as it was originally which fairly corresponds to the above description. However now most of the stalls forward of M are £140, back of that £90 until you are under the overhang. Originally the front row of the dress circle was premium £90 then the rows behind £60, now everything is £140. The upper circle was £30, back rows £21, now £60 and £50. So they are now selling the upper circle at their top quoted price.

It's just so disingenuous to say you are anti-touting and will refuse entry to people buying tickets at inflated prices but then your own policy is to inflate your prices to over double if something is popular.

Fair enough but this is dynamism on acid. £60 for those horrible old hard-backed seats in row E of the upper circle, miles from the stage with a top down view? No thanks.

The real shame is that regular theatregoers who know the Old Vic just won't pay these joke prices but people who aren't in the theatregoing habit and simply desperate to see Raph Feinnes onstage will be conned into thinking that is what these tickets are worth, get there and feel totally ripped off. It is perpetuating the myth that all theatre is elitist and prohibitatively expensive.

From www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/the-old-vics-new-artistic-director-matthew-warchus-on-succeeding-kevin-spacey-a2924551.html

That's going well then!

What is going on with theatre prices?! I've brought my family to London several times a year for 15 years and the pricing has just gone crazy in recent times. I used to cringe at paying £60 a seat front stalls but this is just ridiculous. I fear regular theatregoers are being priced out of 'starry' shows.

When I was under 26 I got a front row seat for £12. And now it's £140... I'll have to pass. Not paying £60 for a crappy seat.