A Dog's Heart

Synopsis

Based on Mikhail Bulgakov's once-banned satire on the New Soviet Man, Alexander Raskatov's A Dog's Heart tells of a stray mongrel who becomes human after an experimental organ transplant. But, as the Professor soon discovers to his cost, a beast is still a beast, even if it looks like a man.

Our Review:

21 November 2010

It took the matchmaking skills of Pierre Audi at De Nederlandse Oper to bring Simon McBurney and Mikhail Bulgakov together, even though on paper the English director and Soviet satirist seem made for each other. But McBurney rarely dances to other people’s tunes, and he only signed up to the project once his ear had been beguiled by siren sounds from Alexander Raskatov’s score.

The siren of myth was a woman’s head on a bird’s body; Bulgakov gives us a bloke with a dog’s heart (or more accurately a dog, Sharik, with human testicles and pituitary gland) and beguiling it is not. This manmade man-mutt represents, with no great subtlety, Bulgakov’s view of a downtrodden Russian proletariat assuming power after the revolution, only to destroy the promised land through its own uncouth baseness. For Sharik, read Stalin. No wonder the book was banned in Russia for half a century.

Simon McBurney gives A Dog’s Heart the full Complicite tr...

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Latest User Review

JJE - 3 December 2010:

Brilliant piece all round. Saw it last night and it's as goos as modern opera gets....

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