Reader Reviews
The Master and Margarita (Barbican Centre, West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | Unreal, surreal, superb, phantasmagorical, fantastic and immensely thought-provoking, - What else can I say? - David Robinson | 17 Jan 13 |
| I've now seen this production twice - in March 2012 and again, last night. I felt myself far more moved on this occasion perhaps because I was taken aback less with the staging and thus was able to concentrate more on the acting. Paul Rhys is about as fine an actor to grace a London stage as its possible to imagine. A profound piece of theatre - do anything legal you can to get your hands on a ticket - Karen Seward | 11 Jan 13 |
| I saw this yesterday at the Barbican, and I thought it was quite a disgrace to the novel. I'm sorry to see so many people mistake this for good theatre. I expected Black Magic, but the production amounted to a trivial and tired hocus-pocus only, with unremarkable, by-numbers acting and heaps of unimaginatively used technology. Woland looked and sounded like a Tim Burton prop, lacking all the uncanny ambiguity of the original character, and the humbly dignified Ha Nocri was made into a whining, anorexic pensioner with un ugly willie. Most embarrassingly, the production equated these two characters (mind you, Satan and Christ) in a final 'grand creative gesture' a la Homer Simpson, which couldn't be further removed from the author's intentions. I haven't got enough time to list everything I disliked about the production. The monotonous braying of Pilate, substituting emotional expression. The Scary Spice mannerisms of the slenderized Behemoth cat. The booming Hollywood sound effects, letting us know that something important had just happened on the stage. The occasional silly attempts at 'contemporizing', with iPad and Primark namehecked (as if people pay for a pricy theatre ticket just to be told platitudes about consumerism). Also, I couldn't see why Judas was individualized through his costume as an ethnic Jew, while all the others wore garments of the 'generic signifier' kind. All in all, a big stinker. My two points go for the actor playing the Master, who delivered some moments of true drama, and for the impeccably assisting technical crew. - István Zöld | 04 Jan 13 |
