1. When we talk about Mikhail Bulgakov’s tragic life and career, a famous petition has been mentioned many times, which the writer wrote in July, 1929 to Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, the bloody-handed dictator.

Theatrical mystery

The petition was written at that time, when the confused, not a little bit life threatening communist system, on different legal ways, put more and more intense and mostly psychological pressure on the writer, that way they tried to persuade the one, who was sentenced to death. The reason of this sentence was the fact, that the writer has become “a state inside the state”, “a strange phenomenon” – this outstanding nature the communist totalitarian system cannot handle for long – and consequently the fact, that he “was” a writer.

One of the most sophisticated experiment of Bulgakov’s career – he was professor, Ion Vartic – since the Romanian debut of the Russian writer in 1995 (Univers Publisher, Bucharest), when the whole novel was published first, he drew attention to two very important details in the epilogue of the famous Master and Margarita.

First, that another Bulgakov’s work, which has connection to his life, the Theatrical novel, which real tittle it A dead man’s notes. Secondly, there is a line in The Bug by Mayakovsky, which was published in 1929, where we can get examples for dead and old-fashioned words: “foolishness, bureaucracy, bohemia, Bulgakov, bickering”. “During the time of terror, when arrestment, the working camps in Siberia or simply the executions were ordinary, Bulgakov tried with desperate courage to slow down the faster and faster human and artistic breakups.” – as Ion Vartic stated it.

In both the present epilogue and in the book, titled Bulgakov şi secretul lui Koroviev: interpretare figurală la Maestrul şi Margareta (Apostrof Library & Polirom Publisher, 2006) Ion Vartic mentioned not only the petition written to Stalin, but Bulgakov’s letter too, which he sent to the soviet government on 28th Marc, 1930, which is appreciated by the analysers of the text as “the possible model of resistance”. The letter shocked us with “the informality of the writer’s tone, who does not know compromise”. “I am a MYTHICAL WRITER” as Bulgakov admitted it then (Ana-Maria Brezuleanu said in the work, titled Diavoliada, which was published by the Univers Publisher in 1998, that Bulgakov himself wrote it with capital letters), and immediately added to it “with dark and mystical colours” to emphasise “many horrific aspects of our everyday life”. According to Ion Vartic, the creation and content of Master and Margarita can be understood truly only together with the concerned letter.

Key to the labyrinth

I think, that the performance, which was performed in the Radu Stanca National Theatre, which is fatally but aimfully different from the text of Bulgakov’s novel, and based on the script, which was written by Zoltán Balázs, director, in cooperation with Ilona Kiss, cannot be understood without the knowledge of the above mentioned letters: this baroque-like strong performance, which has great forms, it is enchanting, overwhelming, sometimes it is hard to follow, it has many dark depth, with many, many times not too understandable symbols, with intentional missing, which has double meaning, with weird things, with many unjustified adding, with characters, who are appear inexplicably, and then disappear, and it flows as wild tide. It is no matter, how free the script is, no matter how rich in mysteries it is, no matter how complicated the dialogues are, they can be very surprising, rich and sometimes the symbols can be messy in it, the Master and Margarite, which was performed in cooperation of the National Theatre of Szeben and the Maladype Theatre of Budapest, can keep the mystical nature of the original text, and that speciality, that it is the chronicle of Moscow in the 30s and of the happenings of the soviet world. Meanwhile it must have been this kind of chronicle before.

In the performance we could know the Master (Marius Turdeanu) and Margarita’s (Ofelia Popii) unhappy, tragic, impossible love story. I would be happy if it appears a little bit more pregnant. As we meet Ivan’s, the writer’s story, who is the Master’s employee and herald at the same time, his is a fragile and rebellious soul, who gets to know the reality of destruction, which becomes the symbol of the communist system, in the psychiatry. Ivan and the Master are in the same cell at some point, Ivan may become the saviour of that Manuscript, which the Master would like to burn. “The manuscript has never burnt!” we can see many expressions of this replica in the vision of the performance, it is easy to compare to the outcry of “burn all of his books”, which can be heard in Tempest by Shakespeare.

The characteristic symptomatic appearance of the hypocrisy and the reversal point of view are also presented, which are depended on the compromise, possibilities, context of the people, who have organised leading position in dictatorships (we can see an informative part, at the beginning of the performance, which make us remember those ideological ideas, which the communism can fulfil that way, that they manipulated everything, even the art too, with imitation and moral resignations in connection with it). The reality of trumped-up charges and traps, which ended in open trials and often refusals, are also mentioned. I think about here the free interpretation of Jesus (Ofelia Popii) and Judas’ (Ciprian Scurtea) story, which ended up in the killing of Judas, but not in a simple way, but with the help of manipulation, as a reflexion to the rewriting once made by Matthew the Evangelist (Vlad Robaş). The censors of that time (Adrian Matioc and Cătălin Pătru) order the cunning refusals, who are the reincarnations of the prosecutors and people, the agents and informants from the past century.

We can also see the episodes of compromising, arresting (Archibald Archibaldovich’s story – Dan Glasu) or of the disappearing (as it has happened to Libodjev too - Florin Coşuleţ). In the script and in the performance too we can see a world, which is opportunist, confused, in panic, coward, grotesque, depraved, and which is directly subordinated to the evil, who is reincarnated in the building of Kremlin and the world, which is polluted by it, which I can see as the part of everyday life, and about which Bulgakov also wrote in his letters, mentioned above (Ema Veţean, Serenela Mureşan, Eduard Pătraşcu, Diana Fufezan, Mihai Coman, Viorel Raţă, Cristina Ragos, Arina Ioana Trif, Gabriela Neagu, Éva Ungvári, Sanda Anastasof). The world of Woland’s puppets, fulfillers, slaves failed and get changed, Woland appears on the stage as the reincarnation of the Satan, in a wonderful, multicoloured way, the burlesque-macabre like appearances proves the modest knowledge of the character, which are connected to nice gestures and sounds, and to all of these Mariana Mihu’s exceptional actor performance can be connected, which inventively experiences the emotional waves.

Isolda Vîrsta’s notice, who is one of the interpreters of the novel: “the reader can face up continuously with the connection of different elements; the combination of time layers, the lyrical sideways, which emphasise the deep philosophical and social ideas, the connection of satire and parodic, the romantic irony, in which we can find tragic tones too. The contrast, as an artistic tool, it can be found easily.” (from Mihail Bulgakov – Colecţia Monografii, Univers Publisher, 1989, Bucharest).

Naturally for both Ilona Kiss and Zoltán Balázs, who are the script writer, and for the director, Balázs too, it must be an almost impossible task to show all aspects and meanings of the novel, even if the performance always tries to keep most of the modern transcript of the Faust-myth, which Bulgakov dealt with. The novel itself is heterogenous, so it keeps many pledges of the blurred points of view. The script can be valid, and the staging can reflect authentically the complexity of Bulgakov’s novel, and it can create both aesthetically and artistically a really convincing, independent aesthetic performance, because the director uses the excellent basic idea of theatrum mundi as a help, and he puts most of the happenings into theatrical place, so that way a vivid, dynamic, changing theatrical mystery can be created by him.

We are watching as in a theatre

2. So thanks for the big and detailed set, we can find ourselves inside a totally true-to-scale variety theatre, which has been dreamt by Velica Panduru (who is anyway the designer of some purposefully weird and because of accused by being very theatrical costumes) and by Zoltán Balázs himself. This theatre can thank its functionality and technical stability for Ion Cornescu, engineer’s extraordinary abilities. This theatre anyway has saved many parts from the characteristics of an Armenian church, which the director saw somewhere in Poland. That way the sacral and the prophane are connected, and that kind of mysticism remains, which Bulgakov himself insists on, at the same time the details of the theatre history too, and that fact, that the place of the religious theatres of the middle age, was the churches many times. Between the walls of this theatre Arnoul and Simon worked in Greta too, whose cruel Belial was similar to Mephistopheles of the Master and Margarita.

The first scene of the performance can be connected to the arsenal of the theatre in theatre – in which Pilate and Afranius are talking – and which is completed by the second scene, which is connected to the story of the foundation of Christianity, but also to the falsification of the apocryphal texts.

The importance of these two scenes, that they have to explain the next two scenes. These are very important. These have important, spectacular, emotional and artistic adding from the theatrical point of view. Thanks for the earlier one, we can take part in a variety performance, in a real cabaret (the choreographer of the performance is also Zoltán Balázs). The performance is a crucial test, for which the actors of Szeben need maximal virtuosity, who with the leading of master Zeno Apostolache learn to play more instruments during a record short time. They do it so well, that I have to admit, for some moments, I have believed, that I listened to well veiled playback. During the second key scene, we can take part in a celebration, seems to be a pagan ceremony, where the great ones of universal theatre are presented too. From Denis Diderot to his work, titled The Paradox of Acting, has been referred to many times, from Stanislavsky through Meyerhold but there are Appia, Craig and Max Reinhardt, Artaud and Brecht, there Nyemirovics-Dancsenko and Ljubimov, Eugenio Barba and Nekrosius, Liviu Ciulei and Silviu Purcărete appear too, there are people and artists, who could revolutionize by their work the theatre art, the philosophy and aesthetic of theatrical performance.

Theatre and film

This present Master and Margarita, which I could take place in, thanks for the connection of theatre and film, is written on the stage. For the performance they have recorded many scenes in advance, they can deepen the material of the grammar and semantics of the performance, they can strengthen its visual rhetoric, and make possible the usage of different plans (my ideas go many times toward the Life with an Idiot, which I watched also on this stage).

There are film-like cuts too, which can make the staging unique, and make us remember a shooting, and it can be thanked for that transparent screen, which divides and also connects the different parts of the performance and emphasises its kaleidoscope like nature. The camera appears in Matthew the Apostol’s hand that time, when he gets the exercise to kill Jesus. Besides this, the performance has a modern musical world, which strengthens even more the weird and mystical nature of the performance.

Above all, we should mention the troupe of Szeben, who are more merged, professional, their very convincing artistic performance, this complex and long-lasted common work, thankfully together with those well-known performers, as Andrij Zsoldak, Mihai Măniuţiu, Gábor Tompa and Jurij Kordonszkij, Silviu Purcărete, who is always presented, Alexandru Dabija and Masahiro Yasuda.

I heard, that the version, which I have seen is only one version of the performance, which Zoltán Balázs has performed in Szeben. And that the other version, in which the Hungarian actors of the Maladype Theatre, also take part, and it must complete this one. That the scenes of the performance, I have seen, become complete after watching the second version too. I hope, that once I can watch it too. After all I have seen, I am curiously waiting for it.

Mircea Morariu, Adevărul, 2013

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)