31 Aug, 2009 The Devil Comes To Moscow!
It was spring ‘02; we had been on tour in North America and feeling pleased to be back touring internationally after a hiatus of a few years. Both Charlie Burchill and I had taken advantage of the day off in Los Angeles and in doing so decided to visit our favourite local restaurant before having a wander into the adjoining bookstore, just as we had done so many times over the previous decade.
That was the day when Charlie pressed into the palm of my hands a copy of Bulgakov’s ‘The Master And Margarita’, a book that I already knew to be a huge favourite of his, one that he had outlined to me so repeatedly that I had the feeling of having already read the novel without having done so.
That may have been the case up until then, but less than an hour later as I settled onto the hotel room sofa and let my eyes flit over the opening pages, I knew that this book that Charlie had gifted me would live with me from that day on. And that by enlarge is exactly how things have turned out.
Among many other things the novel centres on a tale wherein the Devil, in the guise of a raffish music hall entertainer, comes to Moscow on a pre determined mission, bringing as much hilarity as he does chaos to the Russian capital, most of it is projected towards the greed and ignorance of the then newly moneyed, metropolitan elites.
Full of metaphors and allegory, in flitting spontaneously between time and space, it reaches out to dreamers and madmen, presenting them as both sides of the same coin. My description of this expansive masterpiece – and it truly is – neither remotely fits nor is a worthy attempt, but should it poke your curiosity enough to make you want to investigate for yourself then I would have been doing you a massive favour. Least I believe so!
Musicals are a thing that I neither like nor know much about, apart from the fact that they have spurned some wonderful songs especially from Porter, Berlin, Gershwin, and obviously Rogers and Hammerstein. However if there is one book that has created a notion in my head that it is crying out to be given a musical treatment it is without doubt “The Master And Margarita” – I know that I am not the only one who has thought about this. But on the other hand with the book already being the most perfect thing of beauty etc, maybe better to leave well alone and all intact. After all who in hell needs another musical? (Apart from the billions who lap up the genre perhaps!)
Naming a singularly favourite anything is always a banal task, whether it is a song, film, city, piece of art, you name it! And especially so as on any good day it genuinely does seem that the world we live in is layered with things that are able to astound. Such was the case for me when I entered the world of “The Master.”
Jim Kerr