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After their productions A Dog’s Heart in 2010 and A Disappearing Number in 2007, Simon McBuney and his company Complicite return to the Holland Festival with their take on Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov’s novel is a magical realist fantasy about the devil descending on Stalin’s Soviet Union, a woman going to hell and back to save her lover, and Pontius Pilate discussing the nature of human worth with Jesus Christ. It’s a sharp satire on the suffocating bureaucracy and the unbearable superficiality of modern life, as well as a daring analysis of good and evil, love, sex and spirituality. A parable which hits the mark without fail, especially in the capable hands of McBurney and co.

  • © Robbie Jack

  • © Robbie Jack

  • © Robbie Jack

  • © Sarah Ainslie

  • © Bohumil

credits

based on book by Michaíl Boelgakov direction Simon McBurney text Edward Kemp and the company, Simon McBurney set Es Devlin costumes Christina Cunningham light design Paul Anderson sound design Gareth Fry video design Finn Ross light Blind Summit Theatre production Complicité coproduction Barbican, Holland Festival, Wiener Festwochen, Ruhrfestspiele, Festival d’Avignon in participation with Theatre Royal, Plymouth