REVIEWS
Sydney Morning Herald
Lenny Ann Low
27 October, 2007
Costumes are a changin’
Two hands better than 19 in this slimmed-down version of Gogol's classic comedy
Nikolai Gogol's famous comedy The Government Inspector is considered a gift for actors. Set in a fictional small town in Russia overseen by a corrupt mayor and his deputy, this 171-year-old play offers a juicy smorgasbord of 19 distinct, yet preposterous, characters
In Bell Shakespeare's fine production, the comedy stakes are raised through Roger Pulvers's terrific adaptation for two actors. Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa share the wildly diverse 19 roles – Gilshenan plays six characters, Zappa plays 13 – and the result is dazzling. Funny, dynamic and focused throughout, Zappa and Gilshenan are perfectly matched with the text, their roles and each other.
The action centres on the shallow and broke dandy Khlestakov, played by Gilshenan, who is mistaken for a government inspector sent to scrutinise the town. The panicked mayor, and his frightened fleet of unprincipled town officials and businessmen, bombard Khlestakov with gifts including accommodation at the mayor's home, lavish food and drinks and plenty of money. Khlestakov, who eventually becomes aware of their misconception, even becomes engaged to the mayor's daughter.
In turning Gogol's farce into a work for two, issues surrounding rapid character swaps and multiple costume changes could have affected the flow of the play, detrimentally. Here, the inventive and skilful approach of the actors and the director, John Bell, illuminates the production's dramatic wizardry and central sense of joy. Gilshenan fills his characters' every gesture, impulse and beat, however farcical, silly or pulsing with innuendo, with buoyant credibility.
In brief sections where Zappa is nimbly swapping costume and character away from the stage, Gilshenan's stage business turns wordless fill-ins into rivetting mini-dramas. His delirious three-way lovemaking scenes behind a couch, involving some excellent puppetry, are spot-on in execution while pushing the limits of taste to delicious heights.
Similarly, Zappa's mastery at delivering defined performances for each of his 13 characters is astonishing. Whether giddy with worry as the sycophantic mayor, yanking a facial twitch as the school superintendent or twittering amorously as the hairy-chested mayor's wife resplendent in pink, Zappa delivers complete, clear and absorbing performances.
The designer Stephen Curtis's ingenious unfolding cardboard box set is a deft and easily manipulated tool for cast and crew while his costumes are beautifully ludicrous and evocative of the play's period.
Damien Cooper's lighting enhances this animated work, while the composer Alan John's lively score hints at darker undercurrents in this consistently balanced, joyful and breathtaking show.
Stage Noise
Diana Simmonds
31 October, 2007
Who needs prozac?
Apparently some potential theatre-goers have been put off by the title of this Russian classic, believing that its plainness promises an evening of didactic medicine (awfully good for you but hard to take). What a pity! DO NOT BE PUT OFF!
The Government Inspector by Nikolai Gogol and first staged in 1836 in St Petersburg, was a wicked, sprawling, satirical comedy. Dozens of characters filled the stage with the petty worries and snobberies of small town Tsarist Russia as its august citizens frantically prepare for a visit by the high-ranking official of the title.
Coincidentally (there always has to be a coincidence) just as the townsfolk are working themselves into a lather in preparation for the dreaded bureaucrat, a Mr Khlestakov happens to arrive. He is an impoverished wastrel and accomplished ninny, but this doesn't stop everyone, from the Mayor down, believing he is the man with the power of life and death – and – improbably – the ear of the Tsar.
As is so often the case when an inspired comic/court jester has the nerve to hold up a mirror to his society, Gogol's play hugely amused Tsar Nicholas I who insisted it be staged at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. Consequently tout haute St Petersburg were able to laugh – nervously – as the Tsar guffawed at seeing himself and his court mercilessly lampooned, albeit by proxy.
Roger Pulvers has freshly translated and remade the play (it's more than mere adaptation) in an ingenious fashion by divvying up the most important characters, male and female, and engineering their entrances and exits so that just two actors take on the lot. This could be a close to impossible ask if the two were less accomplished than Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa.
Zappa is a fine actor who also has the timing of a Swiss watch when it comes to comedy; he slips seamlessly between 13 characters and makes a wonderfully grotesque bourgeois matron. Gilshenan is now, after his years honing his craft with Bell Shakespeare, one of the most inspired clowns of his generation. He has the loose-limbed, unselfconscious physicality of Michael Crawford, but none of the inane-wet-mincey qualities that made his Some Mothers character rather shuddery. Rather, Gilshenan is on the Buster Keaton side of comic genius: at home with the hilarity of silliness and pratfalls but with a casual, gentle manliness – even when his character is a prating fop as is the non-Government Inspector.
The setting – an office constructed of a large opening-closing cardboard box of the kind favoured by dreary clerks for the storing of important papers – is a spectacularly apposite idea by Stephen Curtis with lighting by Damien Cooper; plus gloriously madcap folksy oompah soundtrack by Alan John.
The play and the performances are among the most entertaining and clever we have seen in Sydney in a long while – not since Drew Forsythe's turn as The Venetian Twins of face-achingly funny memory. Comedy is particularly difficult to pull off because it must appear effortless – or it looks like hard work and is therefore a dismal failure.
Steered by director John Bell, Zappa and Gilshenan between them (not forgetting four hidden quick-change dresser assistants) manage one of the great nights of comedy theatre. It is silly as a wheel and took almost as long to invent. Treat yourself. But remember the play's epigraph: "If your face is crooked, don't blame the mirror."
The Sun-Herald
Jason Blake
28 October, 2007
Satire good as gold
This dazzling display of sustained comic invention is the best night out the Bell Shakespeare Company has laid on in years.
Nikolai Gogol’s venomous satire on bureaucratic corruption was first performed in 1836. The plot hangs on a case of mistaken identity when career idler Khlestakov, travelling to his father’s estate for the bollocking of his life, is mistaken for a government inspector by the folk of a flyblown Russian village. The local mayor embarks on an epic palm-greasing mission to ensure a good report is sent back to St Petersburg. Khlestakov can’t believe his luck and gleefully takes them all to the cleaners.
In its original form, Gogol’s play can employ a cast of 20 or more. Here, translator-adaptor Roger Pulvers pares the cast list to two: Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa. Quick character change is the order of the day and they don and doff personalities faster than most of us could swap hats.
Drawing on a vaudeville tradition of pratfalling, Gilshenan plays six characters but anchors the piece brilliantly as the randy dandy Khlestakov. A desperately funny scene in which he extracts the maximum value from a paltry meal recalls Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush. His wild drunk act is like an extension of Dudley Moore’s Arthur routine. His facial gurning is pure Jim Carrey. It’s a wonderful, tumbling dance of a performance.
Zappa plays 13 characters (including the mayor) and although they’re played broadly for laughs he always invests them with palpable sadness and humanity. His physical and vocal variety ensures every entrance is distinct from the last.
Director John Bell orchestrates this parade of oddballs at a cracking pace and Stephen Curtis’s design – a gigantic cardboard box that unfolds into shabby offices, gimcrack hotel rooms and prissy parlours – is delightful. The backstage crew also deserves a mention. Without them, none of this would be possible.
There are passages where the method overwhelms the satirical intent of the play and a couple of unavoidably slow changes but The Government Inspector passes muster by a mile. Don’t miss it.
Sunday Telegraph
Jo Litson
28 October, 2007
It’s a farce, and a very funny one at that
Nikolai Gogol’s comic masterpiece The Government Inspector is a biting but gleeful satire on bureaucratic corruption and human folly.
The 1836 play is set in a small provincial Russian town, where a corrupt mayor and his cronies have been on the take for years.
Mistaking an impoverished dandy from St Petersburg for a government inspector, they shower him with bribes only for the wily dandy to seduce their woman and do a bunk with their money just before the real inspector arrives.
Originally written for a cast of 23, Bell Shakespeare is staging a version by Roger Pulvers adapted for two actors. Playing 17 grotesquely funny characters between them, Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa are superb.
As the dandy Khlestakov, Gilshenan’s clowning is utterly priceless. On stage for most of the play, he has devised beautifully observed comedy routines to cover the gaps while Zappa changes costume and beguiles with his elastic physicality, mobile face and immaculate timing. Playing 13 roles, including the bully-boy mayor and his flirtatious wife, Zappa pulls off a series of remarkable physical and vocal transformations. Aided by Stephen Curtis’s cleverly constructed costumes.
Directed by John Bell, politics and satire play second fiddle to farce. And, given the restrictions of the format, the momentum does flag at times. But, overall, it’s a really good laugh and a chance to savour some delicious comic acting from two exceptional performers.
The Herald Sun
Monday 1 October 2007
Chris Boyd
John Bells’ production of The Government Inspector (by Nikolai Gogol, adapted by Roger Pulvers) is two hours of gleefully funny slapstick and mind-bogglingly virtuosic acting.
Two actors pull off a play with more than two dozen characters in it. It’s one out of the box. But Gogol it ain’t. Unless Gogol is an abbreviation for Goggomobile.
When Gogol wrote this play – which ridiculed corruption rife throughout Russia – it was seditious. Had Tsar Nicholas not personally approved of the play, it’s unlikely it would have been staged. Even with Nick’s nod, Nikolai Gogol was run out of town.
This play about a despot bureaucrat on the take was intentionally funny – brute farce peopled with venal, horrible people – but you have to imagine it being played in Brisbane 20 years ago, when brown paper bags stuffed with cash were handed to coppers on the take, to get a sense of just how vital the comedy was. Think Moliere and Max Gilles.
In Gogol’s play, a corrupt provincial governor hears a government inspector is about to visit, unannounced. First he tries to spruce the town up then, believing he has found the official staying at the local inn, tries to schmooze him. He pays his hotel bills, invites him to stay in his home, offers him loans, plies him with drink.
The Fawlty Towers joke is that he has the wrong man. A St Petersburg toff living beyond his means – a “puny, nasty, runt of a man” – can’t believe his luck. He leeches off the very people who leech off the masses.
Pulvers’ adaption is fast and loose. He might keep a gag (like a note written on a hotel bill) but will happily reassign it from one character to another. The inspector’s sassy old servant, Osip, only gets a single scene in this version. Which is a great shame. He’s shrewder than his boss and all the more interesting. But that’s lost, here, in the procession.
But what a procession. We’re used to seeing Darren Gilshenan clowning around for Bell (who direction is deft and confident), but not William Zappa. While Gishenan is like a mad marionette, all painted surface and splintered wood. Zappa is a clown from a Sam Beckett play, one who has waited for Godot for more than half a century. This craggy-faced actor makes the most astonishingly sexy woman, too.
Sunday Herald Sun
Sunday 30 September 2007
Kate Rose
Two Much fun
In short: One doesn’t need to inspect for long – it’s laugh at first sight.
The original version of this play may have been written by a Ukrainian playwright born almost 200 years ago, but John Bell’s ever-brilliant troupe makes it not only recognisable to contemporary audiences, but also hilarious.
The near-destitute card-shark, cad and unprincipled wanderer Khlestakov is making his way from St Petersburg to his father’s estate, with little more than his fancy suit and delusions of grandeur to his name.
After Khlestakov runs up two weeks’ worth of lodging at a hotel in a small town, the mayor, acting on the advice of loose tongues, believes him to be a government inspector and showers him with money and favours to turn a blind eye to the town’s corruption.
Khlestakov is never one to refuse a chance to live the way he believes he deserves to and accepts the misdirected generosity.
Darren Gilshenan is magnificent as the some-what daft Khlestakov, who can’t believe his own good fortune, and deftly takes on five other characters as well.
William Zappa shares the burden of this two-man play by carrying 11 different citizens of the anonymous town.
Both actors bring breathtaking amounts of energy to their roles, and work in tandem to create wonderful scenes of physical comedy. Their timing is impeccable and despite opening night set problems, nothing could put them off their game.
The numerous character changes often leave one or other on the stage alone for periods of time, yet they never struggle to maintain the audience’s interest with their odes to early slapstick comedy.
Bell’s standout direction moves the show at a cracking pace and has capitalised on the vast talents of his actors, proving that despite the name, there’s more to this group than just Shakespeare.
The Age
Saturday 29 September 2007
Martin Ball
Bell’s Russian Revolution
BUREAUCRACY and corruption are constant companions, and, as many repressed citizens have discovered over the years, the only sure-fire way to defeat these twin vices is to laugh at them. That’s the idea behind Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 play The Government Inspector, a satirical portrait of petty bureaucracy in Tsarist Russia.
The narrative centres on the expected arrival of an inspector in a small rural town. When the mayor and population mistake a petty official for the real inspector, they can’t save themselves from their own venality.
Roger Pulver’s version of Gogol’s script for the Bell Shakespeare Company cuts the original 25 characters back to 16. More radically, all the roles are played by just two actors: Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa. The result is a riot of slapstick and vaudeville, as Gilshenan and Zappa show off their extensive talents of comedic impersonation and improvisation.
John Bell is an old hand at directing this sort of comedy, and he gets the best from his actors. Gilshenan plays the central role of Khlestakov with confidence and style, showing off a range of somatic influences: one moment Chaplinesquee, the next quoting Mr Bean, and all the while reveling in his surroundings like Danny Kaye at a picnic.
Zappa dons an extraordinary range of costumes as he brings to life all the townsfolk trying to bribe favours from Khlestakov. His physical and vocal variety is amazing, as he transforms himself from the ingratiating mayor, to wheedling officials, to the mayor’s salacious wife and daughter. There’s something of Ronnie Barker’s sublime skills in the way Zappa can simultaneously both be, and not be, all his characters.
Zappa’s need for constant costume changes slows the pace and no matter how inventive Gilshenan is, the tricks get overplayed. Perhaps one extra actor would tighten the action.
The slapstick inevitably dilutes the satirical impact of the script. In any case, politics and satire aren’t really Bell’s style. He is more interested in the actor’s craft – and that truly shines in this production.
Australian Stage
Friday 28 September 2007
Lola MacMillan
Gogol’s The Government Inspector, as presented by Bell Shakespeare, is a performance tour-de-force. Adapted by Roger Pulvers as a two man play, this bold production is a ludicrously ridiculous success of a thing. It is quite event-theatre to watch two seasoned performers ably cover the ground of nineteen characters and all without an interval!
Set in a corrupt Russian backwater town, which is peopled by stupid, vile and self-serving residents, a stupid, vile and self-serving lowly government worker is mistaken for the powerful and influential government inspector. Subsequently he eagerly gobbles up the readily proffered bribes and drinks in, quite literally, the ingratiating hospitality of the town.
The Government Inspector as directed by John Bell places the actors’ performances firmly at the centre of the production. Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa energetically generate an assortment of characters who are clearly distinguished from each other. It is a joyfully foolish array of people, with the focus on farce and physical humour. At two hours long, the performers do not once allow fatigue to show, and I was particularly impressed by the female characters and by the most bizarre sex scene I have ever seen on stage.
As successful as it is, such a bold adaptation does have its shortcomings. The focus on bravado performance has the effect of diminishing the potential for satire, as the audience is swept up in the charismatic performances leaving the politics behind. Also, the character changes occasionally resulted in an avoidable feeling of the audience waiting for the actor to change costume, with a bit of comic relief thrown in to pass the time.
Designer Stephen Curtis’ set is a delightfully multi-purpose construction based on a huge, tatty packing box. It cleverly folds in and out and back onto itself creating a fascinating range of settings. The costumes are also really impressive, very evocative of character and entertainingly put together.
The Government Inspector is unequivocally a dynamic and entertaining production. Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa, as enabled by John Bell and various nifty stage-hands, pull off a riotously successful feat, firmly confirming their reputations as multi-talented performance machines. It is a shriekingly successful, comic theatre event. There can be no denying though the sheer brilliance of a production that dares to take risks and breathes fresh relevance into Gogol’s universal indictment. Don’t miss it.
The Australian
Thursday 13 September, 2007
Peter J Casey
Gogol for two superb
ONE of the tenets of Hollywood writing is that satire must contain a normal, grounded character, someone to whom the audience can relate. Fortunately, Gogol didn't know this, and his wickedly funny play The Government Inspector is populated entirely by greedy, shallow liars.
Canberra's opening night audience for this new production by Bell Shakespeare had no trouble relating to the tale of an idle dandy Khlestakov (Darren Gilshenan), who is mistaken for an incognito government inspector by the mayor (William Zappa) of a small Russian town. Corrupt to the bone, the townsfolk set about wooing and bribing Khlestakov, unaware that the real inspector is on his way.
In Roger Pulvers's superb translation and adaptation for two actors, Gilshenan and Zappa play every character, aided by Stephen Curtis's enormous cardboard box design, and some broad strokes of voice, costumes and wigs.
Gilshenan's Khlestakov is a cunning fiend, always looking for instant gratification. He fills his time between visits from the townsfolk with first-rate prop and set business that avoids the trap of schtick. Gilshenan adds to his character with every flip of a cushion, never merely covering Zappa's offstage costume changes.
Zappa, meanwhile, sails through his unenviable task of keeping the plot moving while adopting a dizzying array of frocks and accents, until everything comes to a climactic piece of inspired lunacy involving stockinged feet, bonnets and some adroit work by the backstage crew.
Alan John's score, a sort of klezmer Tchaikovsky, makes it clear that there is a sour aftertaste to all this fun. The world, according to the symbols on the set's exterior, is the wrong way up and fragile. Zappa's mayor, and his frozen horror at the news the real inspector has arrived, shows how fragile a world of petty corruption can be in the face of genuine power.
There will be some - other directors probably - who will criticise John Bell's decision not to dwell on the darkness of tsarist Russia. But Bell makes it clear that sinister forces live in the outside world, then leaves those forces humming in the background. "I've brought order to this town," says the mayor, "what with the police and ... what have you."
That "what have you" is the key to this play's timelessness, and the unspoken evils of omnipotent empires and their security forces are the reasons we need so much to laugh.
The Canberra Times
Friday 14 September, 2007
Peter Wilkins
Genius and hilarity
Director John Bell establishes himself yet again as one of the great interpreters of classic texts with his hilarious production of Roger Pulvers’s tightly constructed adaption for two actors of Nikolai Gogol’s comic masterpiece, The Government Inspector.
It is risk-taking, charged with excitement, bursting with energy and challenging convention with inspired interpretation.
The challenge for Bell, Pulvers and actors Darren Gilshenan and William Zappa is to observe the farcical nature of Gogol’s searing satire on corruption and injustice, while ensuring that an audience is not presented with mere caricature.
Gogol’s concern is with the vices and passions of common humanity. His ridicule evokes not only uproarious laughter, but the “deep sorrow” that Gogol felt at the injustice in Tsarist Russia.
Ironically, almost two centuries after Gogol created his fiction about a small provincial town that mistook a penniless, opportunistic drifter for the influential government inspector, bribery and self-aggrandisement continue to be the currency of corrupt advancement.
Pulvers and Bell have taken yet another risk by reducing the cast to two male actors, who take on the 19 characters between them.
As well as changing roles with lightening alacrity, Gilshenan and Zappa also change Stephen Curtis’s remarkable “box set”.
It is yet another dazzling stroke of ingenuity in a production that never fails to surprise.
The real stroke of genius in Bell Shakespeare’s contemporary vision of Gogol’s earnest intention to hold all that was corrupt in Russia up to ridicule, is the casting of Gilshenan and Zappa. As the somewhat foppish imposter, Khelestakov, Gilshenan delights his audience with a superb sense of comic timing.
He is the king of clowns, in the tradition of the great silent screen comedians.
Zappa plays the ideal foil, switching roles in seconds, and yet capturing in an instant an astonishing individuality in each and every character he portrays.
Together, Zappa and Gilshenan make a formidable comedy duo.
Whether the more sombre Gogol would have been entirely satisfied with this knockabout, farcical double-handed escapade is debatable.
There can be no denying though the sheer brilliance of a production that dares to take risks and breathes fresh relevance into Gogol’s universal indictment. Don’t miss it.
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