Review: PROFESSOR WOLAND'S BLACK MAGIC ROCK SHOW at Spooky Action Theater

Censored, delayed and never published during the author’s lifetime, Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” nonetheless emerged to become one of the highest regarded novels of the 20th century.

The satire on the Stalin-era repression, raising Christian notions at a time of official atheism, borrowing themes from “Faust,” its influence has resulted in many worldwide translations, a dozen mostly foreign film adaptations, a handful of animated versions, five more graphic novel versions and more than 500 different stagings.

It’s been the basis of operas and musicals — even Andrew Lloyd Webber tried his hand at it 20 years ago before abandoning it.

Yet its broad, satanic character is known largely to American audiences by inspiring no less than The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” though Bulgakov’s story has inspired bands from Pearl Jam (“Pilate”) to Franz Ferdinand (“Love and Destroy”) to Patti Smith (“Banga”).

And now there’s a bracing rock opera bursting with ambition from the confines of a church basement on 16th Street NW. 

Spooky Action Theater’s “Professor Woland’s Black Magic Rock Show” recontextualizes the book yet contains its important scenes of a struggling writer, the Master, and his encouraging mistress, Margarita, as well as the interchange between Pontius Pilate and Yeshua that is the basis of the Master’s book, as well as the lingering influence of Satan, in the guise of Woland, a traveling magician in the dark arts. 

With a music by Michael Pemberton, who co-wrote lyrics with his wife Andrea Pemberton, and a book by Jesse Rasmussen & Elizabeth Dinkova, who also directs, they’ve crafted something catchy and compelling, not to mention crucial to the current political moment without having to explicitly spell it out. 

It’s remarkable enough to cast actors who can act and sing, but in this case, most also play instruments (only the drums and very little else seem to be on tracks). All this on a cozy set meant, with some audience cabaret seating, to reflect a rock club — in an era before rock instruments. 

Developed in part at Quinnipiac University, where scenery (by Abigail Copeland), costumes (Herin Kaputkin ) and remarkable projections (by Luis Garcia) were workshopped, this “Black Magic Rock Show” comes to life with deft lighting design by Mike Durst and Helen Garcia-Alton, and remarkable sound (design by Alec Green, mixed by Daniel Interiano) that makes the complications of balancing headset microphones, electric instruments and effects seamless.

Fran Tapia is fairly slithering as the satanic Woland, who after an opening number largely hangs back to play tambourine. Among her entourage is the cat-like, cello-playing Behemoth (Jeremy Allen Crawford); talented guitarist Oliver Dyer; bassist Danny Santiago, who gets a standout moment in the second act; Stephen Russell Murray, on flute and strong vocals; and Marika Contouris as a witch-like woman who is also music director (through April 6, when understudy Lauren Janoschka takes over).

In the central roles are Camilo Linares as the put-upon Master, who burns his work in a fit and is disappeared when his work is found anti-authoritarian, and the woman who believes in him, Margarita, embodied by Jordyn Taylor, who gets her spotlight in the second act, fighting for her love and his work with soaring vocal performances to the band’s driving pacing. 

The immediacy of the gripping, “Hadestown”-adjacent work in this time can’t be understated in a week when foreign-born students who write editorials are abducted by masked men and disappeared. The production itself was aided by the Kennedy Center Social Impact Residency Program, which has since been dissolved by the administration. 

It’s also a great  opportunity to see it in such a small space before it likely grows in stature and audiences grow for future iterations.

Running time is about two hours, including intermission. 

Photo credit: Oliver Dyer, Fran Tapia and Stephen Russell Murray. Photo by DJ Corey Photography. 

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