THE MASTER & MARGARITA Comes to Belvoir St Theatre Next Month

In a mesmerising theatrical masterpiece, the devil will make Surry Hills home from 11 November to 17 December, as Belvoir brings to life Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary masterpiece ‘The Master & Margarita’. 

Adapted and directed by Belvoir’s Artistic Director Eamon Flack, Bulgakov’s novel became a legend long before it was published, written in secret in the gloom of repression and passed around under the nose of the 1940’s Stalinist state police. 

Eamon Flack reveals  “This show is being made in a way that is totally different from anything this company has ever made in my time at Belvoir. It is a real act of love and pays homage to what an extraordinary book The Master and Margarita is.”

An actor enters with a battered copy of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, and begins to read aloud from the opening chapter.

We’re in a city run by fools and mediocrities. Elites protect their power, thinkers squabble over trivia, everyone is consumed by greed and materialism. And sitting on a park bench in this city is the Devil himself. Why is he here?

The story that follows is wild, joyful and magnificent. The tale unfurls from ancient Galilee to Stalin’s Moscow, via a giant talking cat, a mad novelist, a ruthless officer of the secret police… At its centre is Margarita, who has become driven to risk it all to save a lost manuscript – and us all.

“In the darkest days of the first lockdown, we gathered a group of actors and read aloud from this book. Magic happened. Bulgakov was first and foremost a playwright. Banned from the theatre, he let his theatrical imagination run riot in a secret novel. We’re turning it back into theatre, and we can’t wait to show it to you,” said Flack. 

The cast features some of Australia’s finest actors, including Paula Arundell (Harry Potter and The Cursed Child), Tom Conroy (Tell Me I’m Here), Marco Chiappi (Wayside Bride), Josh Price (The Cherry Orchard), Matilda Ridgway (Jasper Jones), Anna Samson (TV’s Home & Away), Mark Winter (STC’s Chimerica), Jana Zvedeniuk (Tell Me I’m Here), Gareth Davies (Melbourne Theatre Company’s The Cherry Orchard) and Amber McMahon (Stop Girl). 

Telling the story of the miracle manuscript that can’t be burnt, Belvoir’s The Master & Margarita will be a powerful and life changing evening of magic at the theatre.  

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