(Charles Spencer’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 3/22.)
WHAT an extraordinary and thrilling production this is. Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of the great novels of the 20th century, a scary, darkly comic allegory about Stalinism and a work of fantastical imagination as it describes the devil and his retinue, including a talking black cat, paying a visit to Moscow in the 1930s.
Yet it is also a meditation on Jesus, Pontius Pilate and Christianity, written at a time when the Bible was a banned book in Russia, as well as a deeply moving love story, inspired by the author’s relationship with his third wife, Elena Sergeevna.