Richard Hess, who heads the acting program at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) read Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 comedy The Government Inspector in a required theater history class when he was a college freshman. Though he recalls the class reading 60 plays that semester, it was Gogol’s hilarious script that stuck with him. “I loved it then, and I love it even more now,” he says.
This weekend at CCM his production of the hilarious show, working with a fresh adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher, should evoke gales of laughter.
The show, which satirizes bad behavior in a 19th-century Russian province, offers not one admirable character; everyone is corrupt. Fundamentally, the story is one of mistaken identity: The self-serving officials of a small town learn that an undercover inspector will soon visit. They are convulsed with panic when Ivan Hlestakov shows up, who is a well-dressed, clueless and foolish visitor from St. Petersburg. Quickly, they become convinced that he is the official sent to detect what’s going on in the town. Ivan is in desperate straits, both out of money and far from home. He is about to shoot himself (while admiring his image in a mirror) when the town’s mayor shows up with a load of rubles. Ivan is so dimwitted that he quickly abandons his dire decision and willingly accepts all attempts to bribe and banquet him.
The simple straightforward farce plays out as the town’s leaders continue their outlandish hospitality while the bewildered Ivan fails to grasp why it’s happening to him. A reviewer of a 2017 New York production of Hatcher’s adaptation referred to the show’s foolish characters as “dumb and dumber.” With wholly entertaining slapstick, this timely adaptation of Gogol’s play exposes the corruption of a small town with biting hilarity.
Hess says rehearsals for the show have been zany, often disintegrating into bedlam. He has chosen Gogol’s script to teach his acting students about comedy and timing. Hess says the script does not require comic antics by the performers. Instead, he’s urging them to trust the material. “They don’t have to try to be funny. They just need to tell the story truthfully and the audience will roar,” he says.
The Government Inspector has been amusing audiences for nearly two centuries. Gogol wrote it in 1834 — he was just 25 years old — and produced it on April 13, 1836. While Tsar Nicholas I permitted its staging, he later regretted his tolerance, according to Hess, due to its depiction of bribery, neglect of duty, embezzlement, petty gossip and vindictiveness. After the performance, the tsar said, “Everyone got his. And most of all, me.”
The production evoked strong disapproval from critics and officials, leading the playwright to relocate to Rome for the better part of six years. He continued to refine the script there as well as wrote fiction during that period, including two classics of Russian realism, a short story titled “The Overcoat” and a novel, Dead Souls, both published in 1842.
“A good satire bites when it is written,” Hess says. “A great satire withstands the test of time and continues to bite for future generations. The Government Inspector is a classic because it was funny then — and it’s funny now. Our production is set in an1836 that feels uncannily like 2018.”
Hess has used dramas as teaching tools for several years, so he decided it was time for a change this year. “I chose The Government Inspector so audiences could laugh long and laugh hard.” He says Hatcher’s modern adaptation “is guaranteed to produce giggles and belly laughs.”
Student actors in key roles include Carter LaCava as Ivan Hlestakov, Graham Rogers as the venal mayor, Gabriella DiVincenzo as his overbearing wife and Zoe Cotzias as Marya, his sullen daughter.
Gogol once observed, “You can’t imagine how stupid the whole world has grown nowadays.” Hess echoes this sentiment and builds on it: “Human stupidity can be really funny,” he says, and his production — reminding us of the terrifying timelessness of bureaucracy and buffoonery — will offer ample evidence.
The Government Inspector, presented by CCM, continues through Sunday. More info: ccm.uc.edu.
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 3, 2018.
