''The Government Inspector'', also known as The Inspector General ( or ''Revizor'', ''Der Revisor'' in German, or ''Rewizor'' in Polish), is a satirical play by the Russophone Ukrainian playwright and novelist Nikolai Gogol. Originally published in 1836, the play was revised for an 1842 edition. Based upon an anecdote allegedly recounted to Gogol by Pushkin, the play is a comedy of errors, satirizing human greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption of Imperial Russia.

According to D. S. Mirsky, the play "is not only supreme in character and dialogue – it is one of the few Russian plays constructed with unerring art from beginning to end. The great originality of its plan consisted in the absence of all love interest and of sympathetic characters. The latter feature was deeply resented by Gogol's enemies, and as a satire the play gained immensely from it. There is not a wrong word or intonation from beginning to end, and the comic tension is of a quality that even Gogol did not always have at his beck and call."

The dream-like scenes of the play, often mirroring each other, whirl in the endless vertigo of self-deception around the main character, Khlestakov, who personifies irresponsibility, light-mindedness, absence of measure. "He is full of meaningless movement and meaningless fermentation incarnate, on a foundation of placidly ambitious inferiority" (D.S. Mirsky). The publication of the play led to a great outcry in the reactionary press. It took the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas I to have the play staged, with Mikhail Shchepkin taking the role of the Mayor.

Background

Early in his career Gogol was best known for his short stories, which gained him the admiration of the Russian literary circle, including Alexander Pushkin. After establishing a reputation, Gogol began working on several plays. His first attempt to write a satirical play about imperial bureaucracy in 1832 was abandoned out of fear of censorship. In 1835, he sought inspiration for a new satirical play from Pushkin.

Pushkin had a storied background and was once mistaken for a government inspector in 1833. His notes alluded to an anecdote distinctly similar to what would become the basic story elements for ''The Government Inspector''.

Plot summary

The corrupt officials of a small Russian town, headed by the Mayor, react with terror to the news that an incognito inspector (the ''revizor'') will soon be arriving in their town to investigate them. The flurry of activity to cover up their considerable misdeeds is interrupted by the report that a suspicious person has arrived two weeks previously from Saint Petersburg and is staying at the inn. That person, however, is not an inspector; it is Khlestakov, a foppish civil servant with a wild imagination.

Having learned that Khlestakov has been charging his considerable hotel bill to the Crown, the Mayor and his crooked cronies are immediately certain that this upper class twit is the dreaded inspector. For quite some time, however, Khlestakov does not even realize that he has been mistaken for someone else. Meanwhile, he enjoys the officials' terrified deference and moves in as a guest in the Mayor's house. He also demands and receives massive "loans" from the Mayor and all of his associates. He also flirts outrageously with the Mayor's wife and daughter.

Sick and tired of the Mayor's ludicrous demands for bribes, the village's Jewish and Old Believer merchants arrive, begging Khlestakov to have him dismissed from his post. Stunned at the Mayor's rapacious corruption, Khlestakov states that he deserves to be exiled in chains to Siberia. Then, however, he pockets still more "loans" from the merchants, promising to comply with their request.

Terrified that he is now undone, the Mayor pleads with Khlestakov not to have him arrested, only to learn that the latter has become engaged to his daughter. At which point Khlestakov announces that he is returning to St. Petersburg, having been persuaded by his valet Osip, that it is too dangerous to continue the charade any longer.

After Khlestakov and Osip depart on a coach driven by the village's fastest horses, the Mayor's friends all arrive to congratulate him. Certain that he now has the upper hand, he summons the merchants, boasting of his daughter's engagement and vowing to squeeze them for every kopeck they are worth. However, the Postmaster suddenly arrives carrying an intercepted letter which reveals Khlestakov's true identity—and his mocking opinion of them all.

The Mayor, after years of bamboozling Governors and shaking down criminals of every description, is enraged to have been thus humiliated. He screams at his cronies, stating that they, not himself, are to blame. While they continue arguing, a message arrives from the ''real'' Government Inspector, who is demanding to see the Mayor immediately.

Meyerhold's interpretation

In 1926, the expressionistic production of the comedy by Vsevolod Meyerhold "returned to this play its true surrealistic, dreamlike essence after a century of simplistically reducing it to mere photographic realism". Erast Garin interpreted Khlestakov as "an infernal, mysterious personage capable of constantly changing his appearance". Leonid Grossman recalls that Garin's Khlestakov was "a character from Hoffmann's tale, slender, clad in black with a stiff mannered gait, strange spectacles, a sinister old-fashioned tall hat, a rug and a cane, apparently tormented by some private vision".

Meyerhold wrote about the play: "What is most amazing about ''The Government Inspector'' is that although it contains all the elements of... plays written before it, although it was constructed according to various established dramatic premises, there can be no doubt — at least for me — that far from being the culmination of a tradition, it is the start of a new one. Although Gogol employs a number of familiar devices in the play, we suddenly realize that his treatment of them is new... The question arises of the nature of Gogol's comedy, which I would venture to describe as not so much 'comedy of the absurd' but rather as 'comedy of the absurd situation.'"

In the finale of Meyerhold's production, the actors were replaced with dolls, a device that Andrei Bely compared to the stroke "of the double Cretan ax that chops off heads," but a stroke entirely justified in this case since "the archaic, coarse grotesque is more subtle than subtle."

==Other adaptations==

Fyodor Dostoyevsky played the postmaster Shpekin in a charity performance with proceeds going to the ''Society for Aid to Needy Writers and Scholars'' in April 1860.

The first film based on the play was actually made in German, by Gustaf Gründgens in 1932; the German title was ''Eine Stadt steht Kopf'', or ''A City Stands on Its Head''. In 1933, the Czech actor Vlasta Burian stands for the inspector in the film Revizor by Martin Frič.

In 1949, a Hollywood musical comedy version was released, starring Danny Kaye. The film bears only passing resemblance to the original play. Kaye's version sets the story in Napoleon's empire, instead of Russia, and the main character presented to be the ersatz inspector general is not a haughty young government bureaucrat, but a down-and-out illiterate, run out of a gypsy's travelling medicine show for not being greedy and deceptive enough. This effectively destroys much of the foundation of Gogol's work by changing the relationship between the false inspector general and members of the town's upper class.

The 1955 Indonesian film "Tamu Agung" (The Exalted Guest), directed by Usmar Ismail, is a loose adaptation of Gogol's play. The story is set in a small village in the island of Java, shortly after the nation's independence. While not strictly a musical like its Hollywood counterpart, there are several musical numbers in the film.

In 1958 the British comedian Tony Hancock appeared as Khlestakov in a live BBC Television version (which survives), one of his few performances outside situation comedy.

In , in 1962 Luigi Zampa directed the film ''Anni ruggenti'' (starring Nino Manfredi), a free adaptation of the play, in which the story is transposed to a small town of South Italy, during the years of Fascism.

An episode of Fawlty Towers has similar story line about Mistaken identity when a guest shows up at the hotel and is thought by Basil Fawlty to be a hotel inspector but who in fact is a con artist who borrows money from the hapless Basil, then disappears, and at the end of the episode the man they were expecting shows up.

In México, in 1974 Alfonso Arau directed and co-wrote an adaptation in film called ''Calzonzin Inspector'', using the political cartoonist/writer Rius's characters.

The play was filmed in the Soviet Union and Russia by Leonid Gaidai under the title ''Incognito from Petersburg'' (1977) and as ''Revizor'' (1996) with Nikita Mikhalkov playing the Mayor. Neither adaptation was deemed a critical or box-office success.

In the Netherlands, a movie version was released in 1982, ''De Boezemvriend'' (The Bosomfriend) starring André van Duin. This was a musical comedy, in which an initerant dentist in the French-occupied Netherlands is taken for a French tax inspector.

The 1981 Taiwanese/Hong Kong move "If I Were For Real" is an adaptation of the Government Inspector set in the Cultural Revolution.

In 1992, Tony-winning Broadway director Daniel Sullivan collaborated with the Seattle Repertory Company to write the Gogol-inspired "Inspecting Carol", which the Western Washington Center for the Arts described as "A Christmas Carol meets Noises Off meets Waiting for Guffman. A man auditioning at a small theatre is mistaken for an informer for the National Endowment for the Arts. As the cast and crew cater to his every whim, they also turn the traditional tale of ''A Christmas Carol'' on its head."

The PBS series ''Wishbone'' adapted the story for an episode.

In 2005, playwright David Farr wrote and directed a "freely adapted" version for London's National Theatre called ''The UN Inspector'', which transposed the action to a modern-day ex-Soviet republic.

In 2006, Greene Shoots Theatre performed an ensemble-style adaptation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Directed by Steph Gunary (née Kirton), the acting used physical theatre, mime, and chorus work that underpinned the physical comedy. The application of Commedia dell'arte-style characterisation both heightened the grotesque and sharpened the satire.

In 2007, the integrated group of the Nottingham Youth Theatre presented a comedy version, in which there were modern songs, and the setting was Snottinggrad, a fictional Russian town. The show was revived for one night in May 2008.

In 2008, Jeffrey Hatcher adapted the play for a summer run at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. A slightly revised version of that adaptation plays at Milwaukee Repertory Theater in September 2009. St. Charles Preparatory School in Columbus, Ohio also staged a slightly revised version of Hatcher's adaptation in February 2010.

In its 2009/2010 season, the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama will present a new "modern" adaptation of ''The Government Inspector'' by Dr. Michael Chemers and directed by Jed Allen Harris.

In 2010, Vivid Theatre Company performed a new adaptation of the play by Andrew Berriman and Colleen Campbell which toured the North East of England.

In 2011, London's Young Vic Theatre presents a new version adapted by David Harrower, directed by Richard Jones, starring The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt and Smack the Pony's Doon Mackichan.

Operatic versions

Karel Weis(s) (1862–1944): ''Der Revisor'', 1907; probably an operetta.

Eugene (Jeno) Zádor (1894–1977): His ''The Inspector General'' was originally performed 1928; revised version first performed on 11 June 1971 by the Westcoast Opera Company at El Camino College in Los Angeles.

Amilcare Zanella (1873–1949): His ''Il Revisore'' premiered in Trieste on 20 February 1940.

Werner Egk (1901–1983): His ''Der Revisor'' was first performed at the Schwetzingen Festival in 1957.

Krešimir Fribec (1908–1996): His ''Dolazi revisor'' was completed in 1965.

Giselher Klebe (1925–2009): ''Chlestakows Wiederkehr'' was first performed at the ''Landestheater Detmold'' in 2008.

Also: Incidental Music by Mikhail Gnesin (1882–1957).

The play has been translated into all European languages and remains popular, inasmuch as it deals with the hypocrisies of everyday life along with the corruption perpetrated by the rich and privileged. In the Netherlands, for instance, André van Duin made his own Dutch version of the play called ''De Boezemvriend'' (meaning "bosom friend", "best buddy"); the 1982-filmed movie is set in the Netherlands during the Napoleonic era with Van Duin playing tooth-extractor ''Pas du Pain'' (which actually translates as "Breadless" rather than "Painless").

In Marathi, P. L. Deshpande adapted this play as ''Ammaldar'' (literally "the Government Inspector") in the late 1950s, skillfully cladding it with all indigenous politico-cultural robe of Maharashtra, while maintaining the comic satire of the original.

See also

The following plays utilize a dramaturgical structure similar to ''The Government Inspector'':

Carl Zuckmayer's ''The Captain of Köpenick'' (1931)

Friedrich Dürrenmatt's ''The Visit'' (1956)

References

External links

Text of the play in Russian

English translation by Thomas Seltzer

Soviet 1952 cinema version, watchable online and downloadable with Esperanto subtitles

Category:1836 plays Category:Black comedy plays Category:Plays by Nikolai Gogol Category:Satirical plays

ar:المفتش العام (مسرحية) be-x-old:Рэвізор (камэдыя) cs:Revizor (Gogol) de:Der Revisor eo:La Revizoro fr:Le Revizor it:L'ispettore generale ka:რევიზორი hu:A revizor nl:De Revisor (toneelstuk) ce:Leviso no:Revisoren pt:O Inspector Geral ru:Ревизор (комедия) sk:Revízor (divadelná hra) sr:Ревизор (комедија) uk:Ревізор (комедія)

Linda Moulton Howe, born January 20, 1942, is an American investigative journalist and documentary producer-writer-director-editor who is currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Early life and education

She was born as Linda Moulton in Boise, Idaho. Howe entered the 1963 Miss Boise pageant for college scholarships and went on to win the 1963 Miss Idaho crown and scholarships, and participated in the Miss America Pageant that year in Atlantic City. Howe received her 1965 B.A. ''cum laude'' in English Literature from the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1966, Howe was awarded the Stanley Baubaire Scholarship for her Master's Degree work at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. She received her Masters Degree in Communication from Stanford University in 1968, where she produced a documentary film for the Stanford Medical Center and her Master's Thesis, "A Picture Calculus," at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

Career

Howe has devoted her documentary film, television, radio, writing and reporting career to productions concerning science, medicine and the environment. Ms. Howe has received local, national and international awards, including three regional Emmys, a national Emmy nomination and a Station Peabody award for medical programming. While Linda was Director of Special Projects at KMGH-TV, Channel 7, Denver, Colorado from 1978 to 1983, her documentaries included ''Poison in the Wind'' and ''A Sun Kissed Poison'' which compared smog pollution in Los Angeles and Denver; ''Fire In The Water'' about hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels; ''A Radioactive Water'' about uranium contamination of public drinking water in a Denver suburb; and ''A Strange Harvest'' and ''Strange Harvests 1993'', which explored animal mutilation mystery. Another film, ''A Prairie Dawn'', focused on astronaut training in Denver. She has also produced documentaries in Ethiopia and Mexico for UNICEF about child survival efforts and for Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta about environmental challenges in the television series ''Earthbeat''.

In addition to television, Linda produces, reports and edits the award-winning science, environment and earth mysteries news website, Earthfiles.com. Linda also reports monthly science, environment and earth mysteries news for Premiere Radio Networks ''Coast to Coast AM with George Noory'' and weekly news updates for ''Dreamland Radio'' at Unknowncountry.com.

In 2005, she traveled to Amsterdam, Hawaii, and several other U.S. conferences to speak about her investigative journalism. She was interviewed for the Canadian award-winning documentary, ''Star Dreams'', about crop circles.

In 2004, Linda was on-camera television reporter for The History Channel's ''UFO Files'' documentary investigation of an August 2004 cow death in Farnam, Nebraska. Linda also traveled to Florence and San Marino, Italy, to speak about her "earth mysteries" investigations. She also produced and reported Earthfiles segments for Comcast Cable broadcasts in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In 2003, Linda traveled to England to report about the proliferation of crop formations and small, mysterious lights there and in other European countries. She also investigated aerial light phenomena in Brazil. In 2002, Linda traveled to Norway to join astronomers, physicists and engineers in the study of "thermal plasmas of unknown origin" in the Hessdalen valley (see Hessdalen light). In 2001, Linda traveled to Hong Kong and Laos to report for The Discovery Channel television series, ''Modern Mysteries of Asia.''

A few of her other television productions have included ''The World of Chemistry'' for PBS; a two-hour special ''Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms'' in association with WATL-Fox, Atlanta. Linda was Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator for ''UFO Report: Sightings'' financed by Paramount Studios and the Fox network in Los Angeles. Its first broadcast was in October 1991, which became the ''Sightings'' series on Fox.

Film and television background

Howe reported news and produced the weekly live news program, ''Inquiry'', at KNBC-TV, Los Angeles, 1968–1974; produced and wrote ''House Call'' with Timothy Johnson, M.D., WCVB-TV, Boston, 1974–1978; Director of Special Projects, KMGH-TV, Denver, 1978–1983; Owner Linda Moulton Howe Productions, 1983 to present; produced, wrote, directed and edited three documentaries for UNICEF, including ''UNICEF's 40th Anniversary'' in New York City, 1984, and ''New Hope in Child Survival'' in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1985; produced, wrote, directed and edited ''The Mole'' for World of Chemistry series, PBS, Washington, D.C., 1986; produced, wrote, directed and edited ''Information's Electronic Future'' in Denver, Colorado, 1987; Director of International Programming for ''Earthbeat'', WTBS-TV, Atlanta, 1989–1990; produced, wrote, directed and edited ''Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms,'' and was Producer and Live Studio Host for a Roswell UFO Crash special audience event for WATL-TV, Atlanta, 1990; Supervising Producer and Original Concept Creator, ''UFO Report: Sightings'', Paramount Studios/FOX Network, Los Angeles, 1991; produced, wrote, directed, edited ''Strange Harvests 1993'', Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1994; segment productions TN, Discovery Channel, Learning Channel, History Channel, 1995-2007.

Awards

Linda was an honored medical producer in Boston's WCVB Station Excellence Peabody Award. As Director of Special Projects at the KMGH-TV station in Denver, Colorado, she received the Aviation & Space Writers Association Award for Writing Excellence in Television, a Chicago Film Festival Golden Plaque for ''A Radioactive Water'', Colorado's Florence Sabin Award for "outstanding contribution to public health" and several dozen other local and regional awards, including Emmys. She also worked as Director of International Programming for ''Earthbeat'', an environmental series broadcast on Turner's WTBS Superstation, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Travels and books

Linda has traveled in Brazil, England, Norway, France, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Turkey, Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, Australia, Japan, Peru, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico, the Yucatan, and Puerto Rico for research and productions. Linda has written four books: ''Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles'', 2nd edition, September 2002, about accounts and research regarding biophysical and biochemical changes in affected cereal crops by complex energy systems; ''An Alien Harvest'' about animal mutilation; ''Glimpses of Other Realities, Volumes I and II'' about U.S. military, intelligence and civilian testimonies concerning "unidentified phenomena interacting with earth life".

Linda is also asked to speak as an investigative reporter at national and international conferences and symposia, including NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and has been interviewed on a ''Larry King Live'' special, CNN; ''The O'Reilly Factor'', Fox; ''Sightings'' and ''Strange Universe'', Fox; NBC's ''The Other Side''; Britain's Union Pictures, ITN and BBC; The Discovery Channel special ''Evidence On Earth''; and the NBC network special, ''Mysterious Origins of Man''.

Personal life

She has a daughter, Laura Kathleen Howe, from her marriage (1968-1986) to Larry W. Howe. Her father was Chet Moulton, Idaho's Director of Aeronautics from 1946 to 1971 and recipient of many aviation honors. Her mother was Mabel K. Moulton. Her brother is James Moulton, an aviation simulator instructor at Lockheed Martin.

Film/television documentaries

Guilty Madonnas — Medical

Borrowed Faces — Environmental

A Poison in the Wind — Environmental

Sun Kissed Poison — Environmental

Fire In The Water — Environmental

A Strange Harvest — Environmental

A Radioactive Water — Environmental

A Prairie Dawn — Science and Technology

Information's Electronic Future — Science and Technology

Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms — Environmental

Strange Harvests 1993 — Environmental

Earth Mysteries: Alien Life Forms — Environmental

Earthbeat — Environmental

The Mole: World of Chemistry — Science

UFO Report: Sightings — Environmental

Film Awards:

Chicago Film Festival Golden Plaque, Documentary, ''A Radioactive Water.''

Denver Int'l. Film Festival, First Place, Documentary, ''Borrowed Faces.''

National Emmy Award Finalist, Community Service, Documentaries ''Poison in the Wind'' and ''A Sun Kissed Poison.''

Regional Emmy, Writing Achievement, ''Fire in the Water.''

Regional Emmy for Directing Achievement, ''A Radioactive Water.''

Regional Emmy for Sound Effects and Editing, ''A Strange Harvest.''

Regional Emmy Finalist, Best Documentary, ''The Guilty Madonnas.''

George Foster Peabody Award (Howe contributing producer of science and medical programming) for station excellence to WCVB-TV, Boston, Massachusetts.

Sigma Delta Chi Excellence In Journalism Award, ''A Radioactive Water.''

Award for Writing Excellence, Aviation & Space Writers Association, ''A Prairie Dawn.''

Florence Sabin Award for "outstanding contribution to public health in documentary films and programs," presented by Colorado Public Health Association.

Ohio State Award, Natural and Physical Sciences, ''Fire in the Water.''

Ohio State Award, Performing Arts, ''Borrowed Faces.''

Cine Golden Eagle, "for excellence to represent the United States in international motion picture events abroad," ''Borrowed Faces.''

American Film Festival, Gold Ribbon Award, ''Borrowed Faces.''

Colorado Broadcasters Award, Best Documentary, ''Colorado On Trial.''

Colorado Broadcasters Award, Best Documentary, ''Fire in the Water.''

Outstanding Film Award, Association for Educational Communications and Technology, ''Information's Electronic Future.''

Creative Excellence Award, U.S. Industrial Film Festival, ''Information's Electronic Future.''

New York Film and TV Festival, Bronze Award, ''Information's Electronic Future.''

Citizens Participation Award from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for documentary films about air pollution and energy alternatives to fossil fuels.

References

''Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms'' © 1989. ISBN 0-9620570-1-0

''Glimpses of Other Realities, Vol. I: Facts and Eyewitnesses'' ISBN 0-9620570-5-3 © 1994.

''Glimpses of Other Realities, Vol. II: High Strangeness'' ISBN 0-9620570-3-7 © 1998.

''Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles'' ISBN 0-9620570-6-1 © 2002.

External links

Earthfiles.com — Linda Moulton Howe's news Web site

Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:American environmentalists Category:Stanford University alumni Category:Coast to Coast AM Category:Ufologists Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:Miss America delegates