Legend says that playwright Nikolai Gogol asked his friend, Alexander Pushkin (“the Russian Shakespeare”), for an idea for a play that he could quickly pen. Pushkin tossed out the idea for The Government Inspector. Gogol quipped that he would write the funniest play ever written. Current scholarship suggests that the play was, in fact, quickly written over the course of a couple of days.
In 1836, at the time that the twenty-five year old-Gogol was writing this play, Tzar Nicholas was more concerned with foreign affairs than with keeping his own house in order. Corruption and greed was running rampant throughout Russia, even reaching to small, out-of-the-way places like the village in this play.
I first encountered The Government Inspector—still the most famous Russian comedy ever written—while sitting in a theatre history class at Rutgers. It’s a pretty basic plot: ‘The residents of a small Russian village uncover the arrival of a government inspector from St. Petersburg. They throw their money, food, liquor, and daughters at him. The audience quickly realizes, he’s not a government inspector at all. Wacky hijinks ensue.’
Current theatrical wisdom says that if you want to have a play professionally produced, don’t write more than two characters, three on the outside, four if there is no way around it. Gone are the days when plays were allowed to have twenty-five characters! But there is something delicious about putting that many comedic characters on stage and watching the fireworks that ensue!
Jeffrey Hatcher’s new translation keeps the language and themes fresh. There are certainly some anachronisms--jokes about teacher tenure, for example. It is those moments where the play seems to take place both in present time and in 1836 that drew me to this particular version. We have scored the show with music by the contemporary Russian gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, who took its name as an homage to the playwright’s fight to expose society’s ills.
Gogol wrote poetry, prose, plays. Not many writers can do that. Despite his fluidity with form, he didn’t actually write all that much. He was one of those shooting star-writers who created most of his work in a relatively short period of time—most of it during seven years in the mid-1930’s. He lived a large portion of his later life abroad, much of it in Rome, much of it rewriting, revising, and defending this play. He seemed to walk back the youthful enthusiasm and energy of the play, and, under the heavy influence of a priest, he came to interpret the villagers as human vices and Hlestakov as representing their conscience or the hand of judgement.
So, some things to think about.
We hope you enjoy watching this play as much as we have enjoyed preparing it. Thank you for supporting the arts. Enjoy your evening.
Sincerely,
Alexis Kozak
