UNTIL MAY 31, BATH: The Master Builder, Bath Theatre Royal

WOULD a production of Ibsen's undoubted classic draw a capacity audience were it not for the presence in the title role of Patrick Stewart, aka Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek?

Stewart was, of course, an established classical actor long before television fame eclipsed his renown as performer on the live stage.

So, if a star name draws people to see great plays, everyone benefits.

It is a complex play which requires concentration.

It deals with intense, often repressed emotions.

It has an ironic humour, eroticism and tragedy in abundance.

At the centre is the character of the master builder, Halvard Solness, a self-made man, not entirely secure in his elevated position.

In the beginning we see him displaying a passion for his clerk, Kaia, who is engaged to his assistant architect, Ragnar Brovik.

We learn he has elbowed aside Ragnar's now seriously ailing father to achieve his current status.

He tells Kaia he cannot allow her fianc to branch out on his own because it would take her from his side.

But it then seems more likely he is afraid of serious professional competition from the talented younger man.

Into this complicated scene walks Hilda, a young woman who has, somewhat implausibly, harboured a passion for Halvard since he performed the Norwegian equivalent of a topping-out ceremony on her father's house ten years earlier, when she was about 12 years-old.

The fairy tale flattery he poured on an admiring child, calling her a princess and promising her a kingdom of her own, she has come to claim.

The tragic reasons for the tensions between Halvard and his wife, superbly and sensitively played by Sue Johnston, are eventually unravelled.

A tragic end is inevitable. The emotional and psychological inferences drawn may be as numerous as the members of the audience.

Stewart delivers an understated, but riveting performance, although he was rather too softly spoken in the first act. He contrives to be both enigmatic and charismatic.

His character is one of extremes, at one moment passionately romantic and the next cruelly cold. In between he indulges in mystical fantasies about trolls.

Lisa Dillon is his would-be muse Hilda, who like many of the cast seems to veer abruptly from serenity to intense and loud emotional outbursts. But it was still a convincing and entertaining performance.

Completing the excellent cast are Edward De Souza, Katherine Manners, Andrew Scarborough and Jonathan Hackett.

The production remains at Bath until Saturday.

Jo Bayne