Margarita Mixed

Puppet's play pulls the right strings

by Mark Cofta

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Published: Feb 19, 2008

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Imagine watching professional tennis without knowing the game: back and forth, to and fro, no idea of who's winning or losing — but wow, these guys can really move.

That's how Mum Puppet's The Master and Margarita feels. Adrienne Mackey's stage adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's 1930s novel — banned by the Soviets, it wasn't published in its entirety until 1973 — receives dynamic performances from Robert DaPonte and Robert Smythe, who play dozens of puppet characters with manic intensity. But to what end?

I haven't read the novel and can't assess Mackey's faithfulness, but any play with two performers taking nearly three hours and a peck of puppets to attempt three storylines seems a bad bet. Mackey certainly deserves high marks for creative staging, however, including the alleyway set (audience on two sides, in long rows). The production is also aided by Martina Plag's inventive handmade puppets, Shon Causer's sculpted lighting, and stage manager Jamie Lynne Simons' expert execution of hundreds of sound, light and puppet cues, plus a few lines of dialogue.

The magician Woland (aka, not surprisingly, Satan) and his vulgar retinue perform black magic in Moscow, spreading panic and driving people comically insane. Meanwhile, we witness some tense tête-à-têtes between Yeshua and the Procurator, who we hopefully recognize are Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

After an hour of bouncing around frenetically in vaudeville giddiness, animating puppets drawn from drawers and cubbyholes, DaPonte and Smythe ask rhetorically, "Where's Margarita? Who's the Master?" Yes, they finally realize, we've been wondering.

Few answers emerge, however. The Jesus-Pilate dialogues are the Master's rejected novel, played before us with Barbie-size, hand-carved wooden figures. Margarita's sad affair with the Master holds promise — "love jumped into us all at once," he claims, but she feels they've "loved each other for a long time without ever seeing or knowing each other" — though he leaves her (and the play, for a long time) for reasons uncertain.

The production strains to realize the heavy satire banned (and inspired) by Stalinist Russia, but what's the message today? I can't say — something about light and dark, good and evil? What would good do if evil did not exist? — but gee, these guys sure work hard.

(m_cofta@citypaper.net)

The Master and Margarita Through February 23, Mum Puppettheatre, 115 Arch St., 215-925-7686, mumpuppet.org.

 

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