I wrote these lines a little after midnight. Because I would like to write that way, that I was still under the impression of the performance of Master and Margarita, which I have watched on the International Theatre Festival of Szeben just now as a professional blogger. Because I feel, that about this performance I should write, when it is still hot. Because if I left some hours past, the feeling would cool down in me, so it is harder to write a complex text of your heart. However, it is not so complex, which I am writing now, but you must understand, what I am talking about, the almost live text is better than a dead one. :D

Before I would start analysing the performance, I would tell something. I know, that those people will read these lines, who has entered this Chinese Cultural Republic (by its nickname it is a reference – Chinese – to his own blog; trans.), and they have not got used to neither my 2.0 service, nor to the style of blog writing. For them I must make the following things clear: that person writes it, who has a bottle of beer in front of him (which he bought in the petrol station next to the hotel), and who needs a 15 minutes long walk in Szeben to collect his ideas after the performance. So he is someone, who has his own bugs, as everybody else. Somebody, how I can tell it, is not employed by any literary magazine, who is not an avatar or the artificial intelligence. Well, if you have not understood it yet, I still would like to tell that those who are similarly odd like me, go to theatres for pleasure, not because they have to.

Let’s talk about the important things. Before I have watched the Master and Margarita I had coffee with Ruxa and Andrea (as I am the odd one, I also ate a pizza), when the question rose up in me: who a play can be made from Bulgakov’s novel? For my question the play itself gives the answer: it is impossible. So not a convincing, well-made play, not that one, which make you see the light at the end of the tunnel of success.

For me the performance of Master and Margarita is that kind, in which everything can be found, without being complete, without becoming the feng shui complete and complacent in it, it is an example of wonderful artistic self-sufficiency, as the great performances are. The set is interesting, the cast is good, in its fast rhythm there are many changes (I likes it multimedia nature, however, it was a little bit too much), the text is perfect too (to tell the truth the cut fragments from Bulgakov’s text). But there are some parts, which can be parts of an ontological puzzle (let me use this kind of educational expressions), which have lost in a nightmarish dream, that way they can never create that picture, about which the puzzle has dreamt. So the performance cannot persuade me.

It is long, too long. And I am not talking about its almost three hours length. But that the most important thing, what the performance would like to express, has been diluted. I have mentioned the multimedia-like sequences (there are records about the actresses, which are shown on a big screen, similarly to a big curtain), many times these are seemed to be useless for me. And there is a musical moment too, (anyway I appreciate the actors’ performances a lot, who have learnt to play those instruments, and they did not do it bad, however they were not too good as well), when we can listen to the songs in German, which I would have liked anyway, if they were about three minutes long. But that way, for more than ten minutes, they seem to be too much for me.

According to me, the performers on the stage, were very good in the prose than in the acting. Of course, in case of this kind of text, which many times you can understand only with the dictionary next to you, it is very hard to create something overwhelming (It is meaning: improvise). I do not know, how can this text be made to be more playable. I can tell, only those that I have seen: they have been reciters not actors. The text is seemed to be playing with the actors, and not the actors perform the text. And I did not like it. The books are to be read and not to be watched.

One of the controversial moments, is about which I have heard before I have watched the performance: “Oh, pay attention, because Ofelia Popii will get naked”, which made me immediately to frown. Because (calm down, prudishness is like an exotic fruit on the ice field, so it is far from me), I do not like very much – sorry for the expression – when the breasts are shown to be artistic act. However, about Ofelia’s naked body in the Master and Margarita I have nothing to tell. Above it, it seems to be a very good solution to ease the intensity of the ball (however very failed one) held by the devil, where Margarita was the host, and where many people have arrived to express their respect, they are those who have been important for the theatre up until then. So for me, this get naked moment has not seemed to be a forced one, it is fitted into the “film”, if I can use than kind of barbaric expressions in this context.

On the other hand, I do not understand the scene after the part, which has been discussed above, when Ofelia, who has dressed meanwhile, takes off again partly her dresses, to put the Master’s hand on her breasts. I feel it unnecessary. That is all about it.

The play is performed with a ten minutes long break. During it almost the quarter of the viewers have disappeared. I stayed, because I was interested in the end of the performance. But it was a program-like interest. So it was not that kind of interest, which is fed by the desire of knowledge, when we do not want to know the end of something, but that how it goes on (soon I will get into a group if I go on with these expressions...). I am not sure that this feeling would be the best compliment, which the performance can get.

Whether I would recommend this performance or not? I have no idea. Get your own conclusion and decide. As you are nobody else but other odd people.

Cristian China-Birta, cristianchinabirta.ro, 2013

(translated by: Veronika Fülöp)