The Master and Margarita - Review

I feel like I have just peered into Simon McBurney's dreams and bit by bit I am piecing together a story.

The highly esteemed theatre director presented the European premiere of his Master and Margarita at Luxembourg's Grand Théâtre on Thursday.

Before audiences even took their seats in the vast auditorium their interest had been piqued by McBurney's confession that the enigmatic book on which the play was based, by Mikhail Bulgakov, was unstageable. How on earth would he pull it off? Directors, like journalists, like to exaggerate though.

Admittedly, there was a shaky moment when, as the play opened with a gangly narrator with a public school accent asking the auditorium, stand-up comedy style, where he was. Audiences shifted uncomfortably in their seats wondering what they had signed themselves up for. But the following fast-paced, naturalistic scene in which we first meet the wry gestapo-esque devil, aka professor Woland, quickly brought them back to their comfort zone.

For newcomers to Complicite's works, there were plenty of trademark inventive and visual techniques to help them picture Moscow circa 1930. The use of demonstrative props and scenery such as bodies jostling together to depict the tram and a spliced water melon for a man's disembodied head were classic examples. From this moment onwards, audiences were carried away on a surreal tram ride with creepy puppet cats and unsettling circus cronies where nothing is what it seems and the only certainty is that a run-in with Paul Rhys' professor Woland would not end well.

The story itself moved so rapidly between scenes that there was little time for audiences to check watches. Equally, switching off would risk losing track. Not that you would want to do either.

Complicite's deft scene and character changes were stunning feats of imagination. Scenes flitted effortlessly from the garden of Gethsemane to a psychiatric hospital and an ethereal underworld thanks to video projections, lighting, sliding walls and a handful of chairs and performers. Characters flew, their thoughts echoed around the auditorium and then there was the stunning moment in which professor Woland turns into the Master, a shape-shifting feat after which I actually had to pinch myself to check I had not dreamed it.

For me, this performance proved that, like professor Woland, McBurney is a master in creating stage magic. There was even something of the director in the devil - the carefully chosen words, spoken with purpose. What he presented in Luxembourg wasn't so much a play but an authentic recreation of a dream, from which you spend the rest of the day trying to extract meaning.

The Master and Margarita is trademark McBurney. Deftly-woven, he has selected a wonderfully dark but poignant story, which Complicite brings to life effortlessly.

The Master and Margarita's two-day run continued on December 16 at 8pm.