Theatrical adaptations of The Master and Margarita

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Plays staged between 2011 and 2020

So far, 2011 was the year with the highest number of representations of The Master and Margarita. In part this was due to the fact that the piece was part of the standard repertoire of 17 theatres and lengthened over and over again. In 2012, for example, the famous Yuri Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow started its 35th season.

But in 2011, the 120th anniversary of Mikhail Bulgakov was also taken by many theater people as an opportunity to bring a tribute to the master. Throughout the year, works of Bulgakov were brought on scene throughout the world. And the Moscow director Roman Viktyuk started a major tour with his Мастер и Маргарита [Master i Margarita] adaptation. But that was mainly to celebrate his own 75th birthday.

The year 2011 also brought some changes in the performances of Мастер и Маргарита [Master i Margarita] in Moscow, the city of the master. Director János Szász, who had been directing his A Mester és Margarita in Budapest, Hungary for many years, was invited by the Moscow Chekhov Art Theater, where Bulgakov himself had been working, to create a new adaptation. He created quite some commotion by presenting a contemporary version of it, including scenes in a subway tunnel. At one point of the representation, bank notes fluttered down from the ceiling on the audience.

The Stanislavsky Theatre was also talk of the town. It fired its artistic director Aleksander Galibin, the actor who had played the role of the master in the TV series Мастер и Маргарита [Master i Margarita] by Vladimir Bortko. Galibin was replaced by Valery Belyakovich, the director who had, since 1993, continuously been directing theatre adaptations of The Master and Margarita in the Moscow theatres South-West and Arbat.

One of the most striking new stage operations at the beginning of this decade was The Master and Margarita by the London based theatre company Complicite and directed by Simon McBurney. In 2011 it was performed a few times in Luxembourg and Plymouth, eventually going to premiere in London on March 15, 2012. Next came a tour including performances in Vienna, Amsterdam and the famous Theatre Festival in Avignon, France.

The second decade brought some gems of performances, as you will read further on, but also produced some dragons, such as the version by the Dutch theatre company Stormvogels that was performed in Amsterdam in 2015, and toured the Netherlands and a part of Belgium in 2016. The performance was called De meester en Margarita, but apart from the title it had nothing in common with Bulgakov's novel. Moreover, this company managed to put your webmaster to sleep during a performance in a theatre for the first time in his life.

In 2018, the record for the number of performances of The Master and Margarita was broken again. The growth started in 2017 when two theatres in the Finnish capital Helsinki programmed their adaptation of the novel almost simultaneously. The Teater Viirus staged 25 performances of Mästaren och Margarita by director Egill Pálsson, and the Finnish National Theater staged 40 performances of Mestari ja Margarita directed by Anne Rautiainen. The Théâtre de la Tempête from Paris staged nearly 50 performances in France. In Germany we counted no less than 9 companies that together presented 85 performances of The Master and Margarita, supplemented by 12 guest performances in the German tour of Sergei Aldonin's company, which is affiliated with the Bulgakov House in Moscow. In Italy, 6 companies together staged the story about 111 times.

2018 was not only a top year in terms of numbers, it could also count in terms of appreciation. The production Le maître et Marguerite by director Igor Mendjisky for the Théâtre de la Tempête in Paris was very well received, as was the play Il maestro e Margherita directed by Andrea Baracco for the Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria in Perugia, which throughout Italy. In New York, The Master and Margarita by director Aleksey Burago for the Russian Arts Theater & Studio was so successful that it received two additional screenings, all of which were sold out.

The success of 2018 was also continued in 2019, with the highlight being the Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria, which with star player Michele Riondino as Woland did a second tour of Italy with 77 completely sold-out performances. On a slightly smaller scale, the theater simple in New York not only played 9 times in-house, but also 15 times at the 38th Fringe Theater Festival in Edmonton, Canada. In France, the Théâtre de la Tempête played 50 more times to sold-out audiences.

Initially it looked as if this French success would continue in 2020, with 36 performances planned in the spring, 21 of which in Paris, but this came to an abrupt end due to the outbreak of the coronavirus COVID-19, which caused that from the month of March almost all events in the whole world would be canceled.


You can view the details of the performances by clicking on a year at the top of this page. If you observe errors in the data or if you got information about other performances, please feel free to contact us.

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