The Government Inspector

The Government Inspector, also known as The Inspector General ( or Revizor or in German Der Revisor), 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

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==

The play was repeatedly filmed in the Soviet Union and Russia, first in 1977 by Leonid Gaidai under the title Incognito from Petersburg and most recently in 1996 with Nikita Mikhalkov playing the Mayor. Neither adaptation was deemed a critical or box-office success.

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 comedian Tony Hancock appeared in a live TV version on BBC Television in the part of Khlestakov, one of his few performances outside situation comedy. This was recorded at the time on movie film but has not been made available for public showing.

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.

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.

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 children's TV show 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.

The Fawlty Towers Episode, The Hotel Inspector, can be seen to have borrowed inspiration from the original play.

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.

Operatic versions

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 "bossom 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

References