God or hell

A new play National Theatre je Master and Margarita based on the novel of the same name by Mikhail Bulgakov, in dramatization Kate Djarmati and directed by Andraš Urban. Master and Margarita is one of the most significant and influential novels of the 20th century. The novel has a complex structure. It begins with the arrival of Satan and his minions in Moscow during the time of Stalin. Satan wants to check if it is true that Russians no longer believe in god, devil and miracles. The plot of the novel, along with a series of side stories, follows the creation and disappearance of the novel about the suffering of Yeshua (Christ) during the time of Pontius Pilate, who writes Master in Love with Margarita. For Bulgakov, the opposite of the ultimate good is not ultimate evil but banality.

Insight into both good and evil is essential to great art, and cowardice is death to art. Master and Margarita is both a brilliant satire on the role of cultural workers in establishing and maintaining the Stalinist system and a philosophical treatise on God, the devil, art and miracles. This is also a romance novel. This work is no less significant because of what happened with it and how its writing and publication fundamentally reflected the changes in the East and West of Europe. All this is common knowledge and anyone who has read the novel knows all this in much more detail and thoroughness, but it is still important to emphasize the complexity of the novel. Setting Master and Margarita to the theater stage is really a big challenge. It is not realistic that all the depth and breadth of the drama in and around the novel can fit into one full format
a performance of one hour and fifty minutes. It is clear to most of those who come to the play, but again everyone hopes that the theater will succeed in this this time, because, for heaven's sake (or hell?), what is the setting of the famous novel if the play fails to even come close to the work?

photo: tanjug / nemanja jovanović

Kata Djarmati in some of her earlier dramatizations (e.g. Ana Edes NP Subotica i Fathers and fathers NP Belgrade) showed that she can skilfully summarize the narrative structure of the novel into a dramatic form, i.e. longer stories. And here, Kata Đarmati "captured" the basic lines of the famous novel. The play begins with a relatively detailed dramatization of the first chapter of the novel, which takes place in the age of Stalinist terror and in which two socialist realist writers who deny the existence of God meet Woland (an emanation of the devil). This scene in the novel is also made up of dialogue and is really receptive to the scene. It is followed by a dramatization of the second chapter that takes place in Judea when Pontius Pilate has to confirm the verdict that the Jewish priests sought for Yeshua. When she presented the audience with the two basic lines of the story, Kata Djarmati quickly and efficiently leads us to the end of the novel. Philosophical discussions are mostly given through Brechtian recitatives. The basic ideas of the novel, which are extracted in the play, are "Every power is violent" and "Manuscripts do not burn!".

These sentences were repeated several times to give the impression of a clear relationship to literature. The director tried to further achieve a stronger connection between the two stories by having the same actors play the characters from the two main stories - the story about the fate of artists in Stalinism and the story about the fate of Yeshua who speaks about the future world of righteous people (something like ideal socialism) in occupied Palestine: Yeshua and the Master are played by Aleksandar Vučković, Ivan Bezdomny and Levi Matej by Dragan Sekulić, and Berlioz and Caiaphas by Nedim Nezirović.

Roman Master and Margarita is a brilliant satire on the situation in which writers agree to serve a monstrous system with their works, receive numerous benefits from that system, live better than the average wretched citizen because they are useful and obedient. One of their main tasks is to deny the existence of both god and devil in their writings. And then Satan personally plays with them with a cynicism that is equal to the insensitivity of the system to the common man. The problem with the dramatization of Kate Djarmati is that no way was found to consistently implement this aspect of the novel in the play. Without this framework, the drama about the suffering of the artist and the prophet loses its power, because the meaning of the devil's attack and the magnitude of the sacrifice are not clear. Perhaps the playwright felt that satirizing Stalinism today was flogging a dead horse, but then again, there are other kinds of tyranny that are just as dangerous. Besides, we live in a time when religion is experiencing great come back and doubts about science are increasing. Today, Bulgakov's Woland (devil) might wonder at the abundance of different beliefs rather than disbelief. Therefore, recontextualizing the story seems necessary.

photo: tanjug / nemanja jovanović

The director had several attempts in that direction during the play. The performance begins with a witty and symbolic inscription in Cyrillic: "Religion is the opium of the people". That catchphrase is typical of the era of hard socialism (but it is essentially Marx's thesis). The fact that it is written in Cyrillic, which is now intensively imposed, can be interpreted as the director's intention to combine two rigidities into one stage sign. Another successful moment is definitely Voland's (Pavle Jerinić) speech to the crowd in the socialist variety show, where he actually addresses us in the audience and talks about how and how easily a rigid government subjugates people by bribing then and today. This scene is effective and at the premiere it caused applause on the open stage - the audience loves when (it) is recognized. However, there are not many moments like this. In the play, it is not entirely clear what the connection is between the position of the obedient cultural worker then and the position of the obedient cultural worker today. The novel carefully analyzes the relationship between the brutal Stalinist system and those who agree to serve it with their intellectual work. In the play, this dimension of the novel was lost because the artists did not want to talk about Stalinism, and they did not find another way to translate this important aspect of the novel into a play. Without that pressure, the characters' behavior becomes incomprehensible. Because it's not that the devil attacked some people, but the paradox is that he attacked those people who, despite everything the devil does to them, persistently deny his existence and invent the craziest explanations until the lord of darkness brings them to a nervous breakdown or die. And then the government covers up the obvious and catastrophic consequences of the devil's actions in the same way that it covers up its pig farms. Bulgakov's sentence "if there is no document, then there is no man" seems to us as relevant today as it was in Stalin's time.

The play has attractive acting moments - the appearance of Pavle Jerinić as Woland and Nada Šargin as Margarita. Then, visually, the performance seems rich and attractive. The disk on which the socialist realist slogan was written in Cyrillic at the beginning turns into the Moon, the planet Earth, the fiery Sun, a magic disk for hypnosis... On stage, a fire rages, corpses' heads roll, skeletons are brought out, they dance with and without crutches and sing Brechtian songs, and the composer Irena Popović plays the piano at the bottom of the stage. The trouble is that despite the numerous attractions, which are in place because it is about devilish miracles, the show has a monotonous rhythm. We also get the impression that the actors put a lot of effort into being convincing and acting at the same time to Brechtian, but they fail to convince us of the meaning of their approach. By having the same actors play characters in different eras, the director tried to underline the similarity between the terror of the free man in different eras. But that overlapping does not help to make the idea of ​​the play clearer. The result is that the viewer's attention wanders and he asks questions to which he does not find a valid answer. One such question is why Vanja Eidus, an otherwise excellent actress, plays Pontius Pilate and why she wears a costume (costume designer Bojana Nikitović and Stefan Savković) that does not help the actress to create an important character, but makes her appearance on the stage a vague metaphor. We have to admit that the director's idea that Pontius Pilate is played by a woman can be interesting in a modern context. Vanja Eidus is an actress who is up to such a task. But in order to understand this breakthrough, we must be completely clear about the new, modern context of this great story.

photo: tanjug / nemanja jovanović

If it were any other director, we might think that he didn't have enough courage or skill or experience, but Andraš Urban is known for undoubtedly engaging performances. He knows how to make an engaged and provocative performance, but it would seem that this time it was not enough for him and that he tried to do something different. Something that is more complex and deeper and for which it would make sense to set the stage Master and Margarita. Because this novel is not only a political satire but also a novel about deep love, about the relationship between metaphysics and art. These topics are close to director Andraš Urban. Let's remember his early performance Wojcek which he did with the Iowa troop, or Short stories about the antichrist which he performed at the Bitef Theater. It is the artist's right to explore and take risks, and the officials should play it safe. This is what the novel teaches us Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov.