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THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR
adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher from the original by Nikolai Gogol More information about the play:
PANIC AND FRENZY AND
GREED, OH MY! Rampant corruption in government offices. Politicians on the take. Bureaucratic incompetence. Unbridled entrepreneurial greed and lazy selfi-interest. Sound famliar? Though any of the above may remind you of a story or two from the local newspaper or the nightly television news, these are actually just a few of the wild antics in THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR. In a backwater Russian town, the locals catch wind of the imminent arrival of an undercover government inspector, sending everyone into a whirl of panic and greed. Fearing that the government inspector will expose the truth of the town’s corruption, the local officials set off on a plan to cover their scandals and flaws and to bribe the inspector into giving them a favorable report. An unfortunate case of mistaken identity sets the town down the path of wooing Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov, an inconsequential and impoverished civil servant who can’t even afford his hotel bill! When the town’s Judge, the School Principal, the Hospital Director and the Mayor start throwing money the stranger’s way, he decides to play along for his own benefit – a hilarious game of deception, misconception and chicanery ensues. Gogol’s play is interesting because it is a response to a very particular aspect of Russian society – a highly stratified society, in which all military or civil servants are locked within one of 14 grades of class hierarchy. Gogol’s characters are busy trying to figure out how important all the other characters are, who has the most power, and how they might gain more power for themselves. This is a play, according to satirist Alistair Beaton, about “skilled sycophancy.” All the characters assume that they will have to find a way to advance their own situations by doing favors for the people who outrank them. They are constantly looking at who is still ahead of them, who they are kowtowing to and who they have just trod upon to climb or claw their way forward. Gogol’s play was first presented in 1836 during the rule of Tsar Nicholas I, who in his paranoia following the Decembrist Revolution, dedicated himself to creating a spy network, meting out punishments and exercising his supreme authority over anyone caught. Rumor and espionage were rife. Paranoia spread quickly throughout the provinces. No one could escape the feeling of being watched and corruption was a given. A good bribe to the postmaster, police or magistrate – or wherever the threat originated – became the fastest and most effective way of getting things done. Weird and fantastical stories started to emerge from remote villages where the people became fearful and absolutely terrified that their misdeeds might be found out. This is the world where Gogol plies his humor – the wild and grotesque comedy of manners within a culture that has become frantic to keep their vices and incompetence hidden from view. The ethics and morality – even common sense – are so skewed that the townspeople attempt to woo Hlestakov into overlooking the fact that: an incompetent contractor has built a hospital with rooms too small to fit anyone larger than a kindergartener; the court system is so misused that the bailiff is raising geese in the jury box; the postmaster opens all incoming and outgoing mail; and the judge believes it is okay to rule in favor of whoever offers him the biggest bribe, as long as he takes it in farm animals or game. Kristin Crouch, Literary Director Those who laugh the most will be laughing at themselves! Though the first performance stirred up a fair amount of critical controversy, Nikolai Gogol’s THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR, first produced in 1836, made an indelible mark on the pages of theater history. Popular success and over 170 years of translations and adaptations for stage and screen world-wide, have established the reputation of THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR as the greatest comedy ever written in Russian. What is the enduring appeal of Gogol’s comedy? Perhaps it is his relentless capacity to ridicule, to mock, to illuminate and to reveal. We laugh at the naked exposure of others’ flaws and inconsistencies, but could it be that we also laugh because we recognize our own human limitations and failings? Gogol creates an unpredictable and hilarious dramatic world, animated by the bizarre and ridiculous reactions of inept bureaucrats and corrupt local politicians to the news that a government inspector is visiting their backwater town incognito. The news immediately activates the mayor’s worst nightmares that the disorder and chaos of his town might be exposed: we learn that the bailiff breeds geese in the jury box of the town court; that current hospital policy has done away with treatment because, “if a patient is meant to recover he recovers; if he’s meant to die he dies rather quickly;” that the postmaster habitually opens letters for his own amusement; and that a policeman may go out on a “drunk and disturbance” call and come back drunk. The town’s officials become riddled with fear that their secrets will become public and that they will lose the little bit of power they think they possess. A simple case of mistaken identity sends the town off on a frenzied and misguided scheme to bribe an inconsequential clerk into overlooking the awful truth of their sins, misdeeds and failures. Though set in Russia (which will explain the title painted across the set in Cyrillic), this epic tale of corruption and greed generates universal appeal through its power to reflect on the particular pulse of concerns within an individual culture at a given time. It has seen productions in Russia, Mexico, the Netherlands, England, Italy, Canada, the USA and other countries around the world. The play functions as a blueprint for the fears and apprehensions of the times and places in which it is produced. In 1926, Vsevolod Meyerhold’s production ended with all the characters being suddenly replaced by mannequins. A 1960s Italian production transposed the action to a small town in South Italy during the years of Fascism. In England, the play inspired John Cleese’s antics in an episode called “Hotel Inspector” for the popular British television comedy, Fawlty Towers. More recently in 2005, London’s National Theatre presented an adaptation called THE UN INSPECTOR, set in a former Soviet Republic in which a minor real estate agent is mistaken for a man from the UN who has the power to withdraw the new nation’s foreign aid. Closer to home, the Seattle Repertory Theatre produced an adaptation titled INSPECTING CAROL in the 1990s; a visitor to the Midwest is mistaken for a National Endowment for the Arts evaluator – someone with the power to cancel the grant of a struggling theater company. As a longtime friend and artistic collaborator with Milwaukee Rep, playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has written an adaptation of THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR that is specific to the approach of our resident ensemble company. During the season selection process this past year, as we were bombarded daily with the mounting local and national newspaper and television reports detailing numerous political scandals and embarrassments, Gogol’s play – and specifically Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation – rang a note of truth for us. We found ourselves fascinated with the timeliness of this play, with the universally-recognized foibles of human greed and folly and with the delusions of ballooning self-importance distorted by perpetual fantasy, illusion and excess. Even though the play is set deep in a provincial town in Russia, the version you will see here catches something particular to the satirical humor and Marx brothers-esque wise-cracking that is a part of the contemporary American sensibility. It is a story that offers never-ending recognition and delight,
assuming a space somewhere in between what critic Michael Beresford
has called the extremes of “an entertaining comedy of errors” and “an
illuminating drama of corruption.” What is appealing about
THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR is the accuracy of both of these extremes: “its
theme is universal and it speaks to the eternal human condition.
Its laughter is directed at what is essential and permanent in man. It
Later works included the novels Taras Bulba and Dead
Souls,
the latter of which was a contemporary counterpart to The Divine
Comedy. Gogol also wrote two other plays, MARRIAGE and AshLeigh Brown, Public Relations Intern
Hatcher’s stage adaptations include the Henry James novella, The Turn of the Screw, as a two-actor play. He has also adapted works by many other famous writers such as George Bernard Shaw and Herman Melville. Jeffrey Hatcher playfully adapted Nikolai Gogol’s THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR in the summer of 2008 for the Guthrie Theater, and has further adapted this play specifically for Milwaukee Rep. Jeffrey Hatcher’s work has previously been seen at The Rep with the 2007/08 production of Hatcher is also an accomplished screenwriter. He adapted
his acclaimed stage play, COMPLEAT FEMALE STAGE BEAUTY, for the screen.
The film, Stage Beauty (2004), starred Claire Danes and As if writing for theater, film and television were not enough, Hatcher has written a playwrighting manual, The Art and Craft of Playwriting. In the introduction, Hatcher gives insight into the life of a playwright. He admits, “There is the slim chance of greatness and the daunting prospect of disaster. But if you have talent, courage, determination – and the ability to grasp and manipulate the skills of the most demanding and rewarding profession – you will find your home and fill the house.” Jeffrey Hatcher was born in 1958 and spent most of his youth in Steubenville, OH, a place known more for its ties to the Mob than being a birthplace for writers. He attended Denison University in Granville, OH, and later moved to New York City where he studied acting. After a brief on-stage stint, he decided that writing was his true passion. Hatcher has received grants from NEA, TCG, Lila Wallace Fund, McKnight Foundation and Jerome Foundation. He has also received many awards including the Rosenthal New Play Prize, Frankel Award, Charles MacArthur Fellowship Award and Barrymore Award Best New Play 2003 for A PICASSO. Ashley Vail, Public Relation Intern
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