A SATIRICAL WARNING FROM OLD UKRAINE
Not way back a rompingly humorous model of Gogol’s satire on official incompetence ran at Marylebone ( https://theatrecat.com/2024/05/09/the-government-inspector-marylebone-theatre-nw1/). That model was by Patrick Myles, and semi-updated to a Ruritanian-Dickensian mashup with names like Fopdoodle: good enjoyable , a timeless lark about mistaken identification and the panicking and fawning of corrupt bureaucrats. Interesting now to see what that the majority scholarly of administrators, Greg Doran, would do with Phil Porter’s new model. He tells an incredible story about how the younger Ukrainian civil servant Gogol obtained to St Petersburg, hated his lowly work, requested the good Pushkin for a good suggestion for a comedy and was instructed a couple of chap as soon as mistaken for a authorities inspector. Bingo! Writes it in two weeks, is aware of the official censor is more likely to ban it however Tsar Nicholas speaks up for it. But the theatre is disgusted to have a 26 yr previous’s debut foisted on it, and does all of it mistaken, so Gogol walks out livid.
A implausible origin-story, and Doran has intentionally set it in the best interval, 1936, so Gogol’s ghost might flip up at Chichester and be happier. It’s becoming to take a bow to Ukraine’s previous identification, separate from mere Russia: within the programme we study {that a} letter from Professor Torkut about his cultural significance solely simply arrived in time right here as a result of she was working round between missile strikes, caring for her granddaughter… .
So how does it really feel? Well, lovely to take a look at, with Francis o’Connor’s dollshouse evocation of previous rural Ukraine and a few delightfully barmy particulars, each in costume and in a stage ringed with bins of chaotic administrative previous paperwork, finely detailed. Lloyd Hutchinson because the Mayor and his troop of corrupt, idle native bureaucrats set the scene vigorously (the 2 little Dobchinskys very humorous), after which a sublime garret slides onto the stage so we will meet Khlestakov, the feckless gambler who will unintentionally – after which purposely – con the group.
There’s some tremendous broad shouty comedy and a very good collapsing skylight and mattress, however unease hit me in Khlestakov’s bullying brutality to his servant Osip, and accelerated by way of his lengthy, loopy drunken bragging scene. Tom Rosenthal (beloved as one of many preventing brothers in TV’s Friday Night Dinners) does this with such unrestrained, un-nuanced shoutiness that I began hating it. But then mirrored that possibly we have to wince at it: for this isn’t solely 190 years in the past however a part of a Russian-Ukrainian comedian tradition, nearer to our personal bear-baiting and prizefighting interval than to fashionable comedy, or the dry British allusiveness we’re used to. So possibly it’s solely proper to play it so broad: Khlestakov’s a lout, not a Lib-Dem councillor, and his bureaucrat victims deserve no higher. And you’ll be able to’t hate for greater than the odd minute, as a result of the stage is intermittently enlivened – because it was earlier as we settled down, price being early for this present – by three dwell musicians in people costume taking part in Ukrainian tune tunes.
So I trusted, and within the second half the sample resolved: one after the other the undeserving officers had been rinsed of their roubles as “loans” to the supposed grandee, however then in a sharper, darker sequence the native shopkeepers got here to beg him to get them justice, and two ladies, one displaying stripes of a public flogging by the brutal Mayor, make their plea to the startled interloper. The ladies, Shereener Browne and Leigh Quinn, are strikingly good, and set properly towards the overdressed Mayor’s daughter, (Laurie Ogden) and her mom, who’s Sylvestra le Touzel: unbeatable, particularly when she goes full Hyacinth Bouquet at the concept they’ll all transfer to St Petersburg.
THere’ is, a sudden coup de theatre because the faker dangers understanding the fact of the individuals’s struggling: Rosenthal stiffens, the sunshine appears to dim, as heads and pleading palms seem above and across the wood carved metropolis behind him. But he stiffens himself towards compassion and will get a powerful snicker – there are much more by now – along with his seducer’s indecision in regards to the ladies: “What’s it to be – the frisky young foal or the randy old honey-badger?”. The group congratulations on the pretend engagement create a beautiful ensemble tableau, transferring after all to the last second of discovery and humiliation and mutual blame , and the Mayor’s startling rant. Gogol’s offended message breaks the fourth wall to inform us how the world is stuffed with con-men and gulls, us out right here included, with our glasses of theatre-bar wine and straightforward laughing acceptance.
And when the true Government Inspector arrives, a correct shock: Doran retains his solid frozen nonetheless as statues for over a minute in lifeless silence, a dwelling Rembrandt portrait, to make us suppose. Then blackout, curtain name and last enlivening folk- music from the trio. At which second it felt as if the early discomfort of the datedly broad early brutality had been deliberate, to share with us throughout centuries and cultures the common , recognizable, regrettable proof of what fools we mortals be…
cft.org.uk to 24 May
score 4
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