(See panel and page 4)

by Henrik Ibsen
English version adapted for television by Max Faber
[Starring] Donald Wolfit as Halvard Solness and Mai Zetterling as Hilda Wangel
with Catherine Lacey as Mrs. Solness, Clive Morton as Dr. Herdal, David Markham as Ragnar Brovik, Harold Scott as Knut Brovik, Elaine Usher as Kaia Fosli

The action takes place in the home of Halvard Solness in Norway late in the nineteenth century

This, of all Ibsen's plays, is the most personal, the one most easily and completely associated with his own life, ambitions, and achievements. Solness, the master builder, is surely Ibsen's double. Both are self-made men; both are vigorous still, but ageing (Ibsen was sixty-four and, like Solness, at the height of his fame); both are apprehensive of the younger generation, knocking at the door, threatening their reputations. Symbolically too, their careers are linked. Solness began by building churches - analogous with Ibsen's own early romantic dramas. He then went on to ordinary human houses - patently equivalent to Ibsen's social dramas. Finally, Solness built soaring towers (what Bernard Shaw bluntly called castles in the air) - the counterpart of Ibsen's symbolic plays. Finally, the Master Builder's devotion to the beautiful and dizzy Hilda Wangel has its distinct associations with Ibsen's own affection at that time for a young Viennese girl whom he called 'the May-day of my September-life.' (E.J.)