Investigations of regular and chaotic vibrations of the autoparametric pendulum absorber suspended on a nonlinear coil spring and a magnetorheological damper are presented in the paper. Application of a semi-active damper allows controlling the dangerous motion without stooping of system and additionally gives new possibilities for designers. The investigations are curried out close to the main parametric resonance. Obtained numerical and experimental results show that the semi-active suspension may reduce dangerous motion and it also allows to maintain the pendulum at a given attractor or to jump to another one. Moreover, the results show that, for some parameters, MR damping may transit to chaotic motions.