Theatre
>The Master and Margarita
>Yo,
I just remembered that I have tickets booked for Complicite’s adaption of The Master and Margarita at the Barbican and I’m very excited… The original novel written by Mikhail Bulgakov is a damn fine book with one of the best opening scenes I’ve read in along time and Complicite in my humble opinion are one of the best production companies around. A very enticing opportunity indeed.
I was never the most avid theatre goer. Haunted by memories of turgid productions dragged to as a child, I equated theatre trips with a desire to drop ice cream on the heads below, desperately plotting some drama to aid an escape or generally becoming insanely bored and fidgety. I don’t think I really got over this trauma until I went to see a Disappearing Number in 2007 or 2008. This was one of the rare times I have witnessed a delayed emotional response to the arts. People (I’ll be honest and say ‘we’) didn’t cry at the end because it was sad. We cried when we left the entire Barbican complex because we were utterly spent. We’d been so successfully sucked in by the story that you’re not given a proper chance to react to the beauty of the images, movement and sound you’ve experienced until the curtain goes down.
Complicite seem to be obsessed with assaulting the audience on every single level possible without you really knowing it. This is a sound installation, concert and dance as much as it is a play. That they manage to do everything so differently, providing such a rich sensory experience whilst never losing sight of the need to remain enthralling and true to a riveting narrative is freakin genius.
Don’t go expecting to have the same experience. Just go because you shouldn’t miss this. Everything I have seen by them has been astonishing and different and The Master and Margarita will be no different.
Enough of my blathering. Go and get a ticket before they sell out: http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=12872
http://www.complicite.org/flash/
Henry
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