The Government Inspector

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 10 June 2011

The audience makes an entrance in Richard Jones’s magnificent and bizarre production of Gogol’s Government Inspector, pouring into the auditorium through a stage cloth projection of the Mayor’s remote country house; on set, they have seen the card game where Khlestakov is losing his money, and an old serf peeling potatoes.

So there’s no need for the Mayor, played with slimy assurance and rapid articulation by Julian Barratt of the Mighty Boosh, to tell us that we are laughing at ourselves, often the key “alienation” moment in the play; we are already implicated, sliding through the vapid acres of Miriam Buether’s wallpaper setting like the pair of toy rats who dash along the dado rail, or stand like mini-sentries at the door.

Gogol’s classic, in a zany, zesty new version by David Harrower from a literal translation by Charlotte Pyke (the patients in the hospital, for instance, are “rec...

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Latest User Review

MARIE LYON - 6 July 2011:

GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT. THE WORK WAS LACKING SPIRIT VITALITY CHARACTER AND SUBSTANCE. A LOT OF GIMMICKS WHICH ATTEMPTED CHEAP LAUGHS BUT NOTHING BEYOND SCRATCHING THE SURFACE AND STATING THE OBVIOUS. COSTUMES AND SETTINGS DID NOT RESPOND TO ANY PARTICULAR AESTHETIC CONCEPT. FLAT TV PERFORMANCE FROM THE PROTAGONIST. P.S: PLEASE EXPLAIN THE USE OF THE SONG "SONO ITALIANO"(!)AS PART OF THE WEDDING CELEBRATIONS!!!...

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