Writer: Nikolai Gogol
Adapter and Director: Patrick Myles
Patrick Myles has re-imagined Gogol’s The Government Inspector solidly in the farce tradition and it’s an idea of farce that owes more to Benny Hill than to Feydeau. There are pratfalls galore. There’s drunk acting, a modicum of trouser-losing, puke jokes and a sort of underlying thread of sexual innuendo that doesn’t announce itself loudly, certainly not in any way that gets laughs or groans, but bubbles away under the surface.
The company otherwise deliberately avoids subtlety: jokes get announced by actors speaking very loudly, or by falling over. There’s no intricately timed exiting and entering at dramatically inappropriate but hilarious intervals; a succession of characters come on, do a bit, and go away. It’s easy to understand, the venality of everyone is established in the first moment, the satire on bureaucracy is taken as read, thank you Gogol and good-bye, and the company gets on with the mugging and the pratfalling.
It’s a very bouncy, very energetic production. It never hangs about, there aren’t any thought-filled pauses, and it rockets along. Actors and audience have a good time. Gogol would have quite liked a bit of reflection on governmental corruption, but this show can’t be doing with reflection, it’s all crash bang and on to the next skit.
Melanie Jane Brookes’ angular design and muted palette are very pleasant to look at, the period set dressing is fun, and the costumes are colourful. Chaya Gupta makes her pratfalls outstandingly elegant, Daniel Millar strikes some eye-catching bravura poses, and Dan Skinner owns the stage as a mustachio-twirling Governor. It’s a bold, blunt, uncomplicated romp built on the chassis of a great play.
Anyone who doesn’t know the source will come away thinking Gogol is fun but forgettable, a trivial farceur with less political intent than Danny Kaye’s The Court Jester and somewhat less spectacular clowning. That Patrick Myles reveres Gogol is not in question. His decision to “avoid agitprop and didacticism, […] to ask questions not answer them” as he states in the programme notes, reduces the significance of his source.
In order to make the play “funny. Just plain funny” he strips it of politics, of risk, of anger. This production is a jolly, pacy, humpsti-bumpsti jaunt. Nothing is wrong with humpsti-bumpsti jaunts, but Gogol wrote something rather more important than that, and that brave thumbing of the nose at a state apparatus that could have locked him up makes The Government Inspector an important, significant, enduring play. This production is funny forgettable fluff.
Runs until 15 June 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Fun Forgettable Fluff
