The Master and Margarita

Synopsis

Moscow in the age of Stalin and a mysterious stranger appears in a park. Soon he and his retinue have astonished the locals with the magic show to end all magic shows and have quite literally set the town alight. But what's the real purpose behind their visit? And what the devil has it to do with the gorgeous and sensual Margarita? Or with her lover the Master, a writer whose masterpiece has been silenced by earthly powers. Will anyone solve the mystery before the night of the spring full moon? A crazy roller-coaster, a wicked satire and a poignant love-story, with vampires, flying broomsticks and a talking cat. Contains nudity and some violent imagery.

Our Review:

2 August 2004

Anyone unable to make the trip to Edinburgh but feeling like something to stimulate a jaded palate should hot-foot it immediately down to West Sussex. There they’ll find a repertoire that for sheer intellectual ambition really puts most of our subsidised theatres currently to shame with a schedule that recalls the most heady, adventurous, vintage years of the RSC and Glasgow Citizens.

With The Master and Margarita, joint artistic director Stephen Pimlott in Edward Kemp's adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's cult novel has once again - as he and Kemp did last year with Gotthold Lessing's Nathan the Wise - triumphantly staged the unstageable.

Bulgakov's last work is a great sprawling classic. Written in 1940 as a cri de Coeur and published well after his death (1973), it reflects fairly familiar territory – the persecution of the artist under Stalinism. Kemp's superb adaptation turns it into a picaresque, mischievous and...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (213.249.173.210) - 11 September 2004:

"I was not sure why the author figure was granted redemption by the devil" Because Margarita loves him so much that she goes to hell and back for him - her reward for suffering is to obtain what she wants, i.e. to be with the Master. And he isn't a coward - he is beaten down by the system, becomes one of the disappeared, as did so many in Stalin's time, and as Bulgakov used the notion of disappearing in his novel. I read the book years ago, saw the play, read the book again, want to see the play again, wish there was some kind of discussion circle afterwards for plays like these that continue to play in the mind. What a production, what fantastic performances. Go and see it now. Those of us who did will be talking about it for years to come....

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