MASTER AND MARGARITA

MASTER AND MARGARITA

August 2 - 30, 2003
  • Original novel by Mikhail Bulgajov
  • Adapted for the stage by Jean-Claude van Itallie from a translation by Sergei Kobiakoff
  • Directed by Jenny McConnell
  • THE SANCTUARY THEATRE at Casa Del Pueblo Calvary Methodist Church

It is springtime in Moscow and the devil has come to stage his annual ball and wreak havoc on a city that believes in neither Heaven nor Hell. Jean Claude Van Itallie’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece combines elements of Faust, the Bible and Soviet Russia with the surreal romance of a writer driven mad by his own work and his lover’s desperate attempt to save him.

MASTER & MARGARITA was sponsored in part by The Dobranski Foundation.

“Staged with eerie appropriateness in a high-beamed former sanctuary, this production crackles with manic energy as it emerges from the gutters of Moscow, time-travels to the Crucifixion at Golgotha and concludes with an artistic Resurrection presided over by Satan… Surely there’s a Helen Hayes nomination here somewhere for what might be one of 2003’s most astounding theatrical adventures.”

The Washington Times

FEATURING

Lindsay Allen
Chris Davenport
Melissa-Leigh Douglass
Tim Getman
Scott Graham
John Horn
Jason Basinger Linkins
Scott McCormick
Melissa Schwartz
Mark Sullivan
Grady Weatherford

Designers

Set Justine Light & David C. Ghatan
Lighting Alex Cooper & Justin Thomas
Costumes Justine Light
Sound Matthew Frederick

STAFF

Stage Manager Jordan Sudermann
ASM Patrick Crowley

PRODUCERS

Randy Baker
Jenny McConnell Frederick

MEDIA

PRESS

“There should be no way to begin staging Bulgakov’s hallucinatory work… But rather than shrink from the challenge of the piece the Rorschach troupe appears to savor it… To see Rorschach Theatre’s persistently intriguing staging, an intellectual grab bag of a play…your body may be perspiring, but your mind will be running an irresistible obstacle course without breaking a sweat… A fluid set appears to expand and contract into theatrical niches and unfolding alcoves and at times funnels action into the audience. It’s not exactly theater in the round but its theater over, above and among.”
Washington Post
"The acting of the Rorschach ensemble is superb. Rapid costume changes, multiple characters per actor, insane hijinks and occasional moments of Grand Guignol (watch out for the tongue-ectomy and the head) — this is the kind of stuff that actors love to sink their teeth into, and in this production, they literally do."
The Washington Times
"Speaking of discoveries, I’ve somehow missed the Rorschach Theatre’s earlier productions, but after catching the company’s ambitious mounting of Master and Margarita, I’ll make it a point not to let future shows slip past me. Working from an adaptation by Jean-Claude van Itallie of Mikhail Bulgakov’s modernist classic about a besieged Soviet author and the lover who makes a pact with the devil to free him from state oppression, Rorschach has created a smart, quasi-Brechtian evening, filled with music-hall flourishes and considerable theatrical ingenuity."
Washington City Paper