T his outing of Henrik Ibsen’s play, translated by playwright David Edgar, is reassuring after Lila Raicek’s oddly conceived West End version last year starring Ewan McGregor – as well intentioned as its feminist revisionism might have been.

Edgar’s is more faithful to the original in form and spirit (although he compresses three acts into two), and its strengths lie in drawing out the psychological aspects of the ageing, anxious master builder at its centre, whose fall from the heights of worldly acclaim is both real and symbolic in a play that blends both those realms together.

Halvard Solness (Greg Hicks) is determined to keep his place in the world but also plagued by midlife insecurity – and the protege Ragnar Brovik (Ryan Wichert) whom he perceives to be snapping at his heels – when he is confronted by Hilde Wangel (Louisa Binder), a young woman who has come to claim the “kingdom” he promised her in an encounter when she was 13.

Edgar deftly draws out the intimacies and tensions between characters…