The Master and Margarita - News

Jim Carrey as Woland?

February 10, 2019

Since September 18, 2014, the musical Мастер и Маргарита [Master i Margarita] is being performed in Saint Petersburg. At the time, it was announced as an international project which «unites the best creative forces of Russia and Europe» and which «unveils the hidden meaning of the great novel». In reality it’s a pompous and megalomaniacal spectacle that, besides to the title, has little in common with the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, and does certainly not runveil its hidden meaning.

On Wednesday, February 6, 2019, Ria Novosti, the Russian state-operated news agency, reported that the production house Makers Lab has approached the Canadian-American actor Jim Carrey to take over the role of Woland in this musical. Producer Irina Afanasyeva told the news agency TASS that she hopes that the contract with Carrey will be signed before the end of February. Oddly enough, she added that the Americans had asked «not to disclose this information before the contract was signed». So one could wonder why she did it now.

A simple reason could be that it is just fake news. That's what both the news site Izvestia and the TV Channel 5 reported. They had noticed that in the message from Makers Lab a photo of Jim Carrey was photoshopped on an old poster of the musical. It is not the first time that Makers Lab spreads false messages. In 2016 they announced that the actor Kevin Spacey would play a role in the musical. Two years later, on January 31, 2018, they proudly announced to have signed a contract with the Italian actress and model Monica Bellucci for playing the role of Margarita. None of this ever happened, though.

In our section Adaptations you can read more about this musical and its imaginative - not to say lying - communication style.

Click here to read more about this musical