Nikolai Gogol

The Government Inspector

comedy

Translated by:: Géza Bodolay

The mayor of a provincial town receives a letter informing him that an inspector is arriving in the village under secret orders, incognito. The alarm of the summoned officials is only heightened by the news that an unknown young man is staying at an inn. So order is in danger - the order that has been built up so long ago through bribery, mutual favours, compromises and embezzlement, through painstaking work.

The premiere of The Government Inspector in 1836 provoked fierce protests from official circles, which led to Gogol's emigration; yet, despite this—or perhaps because of it—the work remains a guaranteed success today.

"Gogol's The Government Inspector was a pioneering discovery of a new dramatic genre, the tragic farce. The constant and most ancient plot of comedy, from ancient comedy to the commedia dell'arte, from the iron folk farces to Molière, is the clash of two houses—one of virtue and order, the other of unbridled pleasure. One is home to the family, the other to those who threaten family and order. Sometimes, however, we are dealing with comedies of their own: anecdotes that immediately reveal the absurdity of reality and the realism of absurdity, the comedy of the nightmare and the nightmare of comedy. This is particularly true of The Revisor, the first tragic farce. As soon as the stranger enters the house of virtue and respectability, the masks come off. The pater familias turns out to be an old lecher and a miserly tyrant, his wife is just waiting for a suitor, his daughter elopes with her lover, his son has pawned his inheritance well in advance. In The Revisor, the town father and the local gentry wear the mask of corruption from the first scene. Gogol reverses the traditional comedy procedures one by one.

The great comedies always reflect something, but The Government Inspector is the first and indeed the only play in which the function of comedy as reflection is theatrically realised. When, in the final scene of The Government Inspector​​​​​, the mayor and the notables freeze like giant puppets, the mirror itself freezes. At that moment, the auditorium becomes the stage and the stage becomes the auditorium. In the revisor, the house of order and power is also a house of terror. At the premiere of the play, the hall was packed: both houses were represented. "What are you laughing at? Laughing at yourselves!" This most magnificent line of the comedy, shouted by the mayor directly into the audience's face, was written by Gogol after the premiere."
Jan Kott

 

Synopsis translated by: Vivien-Tamara Sárközi

Cast of characters:

Premier: 2008.10.26