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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 23 December 2012
This a theatre review of THE MASTER AND MARGARITA. |
“Something terrible has happened to me. Please come, please come, please come!”
It is not only impressive that theatre company Complicite decided to tackle such an ambitious feat, adapting Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastic novel, but even more to deliver such an exhilarating interpretation.
Using multi-media on a spacious, minimalist stage to mesmerising effect, the audience is transported to Moscow, 1939. The rear wall is a brick canvas to project interiors; though most impressively it is used to show whereabouts in the city the action is unfolding, using Google Maps-style top down cartography and zooming in. Then at dizzying pace we whizz through the multiple plot strands. It is fast and furious and you must concentrate. Even having read the source material, and the graphic novel adaptation, you still have to be on your toes – and that’s not a criticism, it appears Complicite thinks highly of its audience.
It is not only impressive that theatre company Complicite decided to tackle such an ambitious feat, adapting Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantastic novel, but even more to deliver such an exhilarating interpretation.
Using multi-media on a spacious, minimalist stage to mesmerising effect, the audience is transported to Moscow, 1939. The rear wall is a brick canvas to project interiors; though most impressively it is used to show whereabouts in the city the action is unfolding, using Google Maps-style top down cartography and zooming in. Then at dizzying pace we whizz through the multiple plot strands. It is fast and furious and you must concentrate. Even having read the source material, and the graphic novel adaptation, you still have to be on your toes – and that’s not a criticism, it appears Complicite thinks highly of its audience.
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(Photos by Bohumil Kostohryz and Hugo Glendinning.)
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It may be argued there are four threads:
1. A man, who is eventually known as The Master, wins 100,000 Roubles in the state lottery, gives up his job, and starts to write a novel. It is about Jesus and Pontius Pilate, and perhaps anti-authoritarian. Not only does the Communist government espouse secularity, it is quick to crush such freedom of expression. No publisher seems interested. The Master while writing begins a loving affair with a married woman, Margarita.
2. At roughly the same time, a poet and a publisher, discussing God in a park, are interrupted by someone who claims to be a professor, but later turns out to be a devil-like figure – he is accompanied by a sinister gang, including a human-sized horny cat (I kid you not). This professor proceeds to tell the two literary men about Jesus. The same story as written by The Master.
3. The recounting of part of the lives of Jesus, and Pontius Pilate, who explicitly states that all authority is a form of violence against people.
4. The Master and the poet end up in the same institution. Margarita makes a deal with the professor to save her lover.
Vibrant and exciting, the production pulsates. The characters maybe cyphers, but are more than that, you care about or are fascinated by them. The performances are committed. The sets morph seamlessly, and a soundtrack that incongruously has The Rolling Stones’ GIMME SHELTER, keep you entranced. While religion is used as a skeleton to hang the meat of discourse, it is humanism and mercy that shines through, and without any kind of preachiness.
Subversive, emotional, sexy, mysterious, optimistic, epic. High five Complicite.
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