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The Inspector
adapted and translated from Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General by Footbarn Travelling Theatre
with the collaboration of Andre Markowicz and Ellen Riot

    Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector General was first performed in 1836. It is a satire about human greed and self-delusion set in a nondescript Russian village in the early nineteenth century. Its primary targets are the selfish and corrupt local officials who are thrown into a state of panic by the news that a government inspector is coming and may in fact already have arrived incognito. When they hear that a well-dressed young man has been living at the local hotel for two weeks, they jump to the obvious conclusion and immediately plan to bribe and fawn over him.
    Of course the young man is not the inspector after all, but an impoverished traveller out of St. Petersburg who has nothing but his clothes to his name. He quickly sizes up the situation and he allows the mayor and his cronies to humiliate themselves. As they shower him with hospitality (and cash) he spins ever-more elaborate yarns of his own fame and renown. This only increases their excitement, and they begin to envision even greater futures for themselves, while he makes plans to take the money and run after a brief stop to seduce the mayor’s wife and daughter.
    Despite the political resonances of this Tsarist-era tale, it is a universal story with almost endless potential for adaptation. Footsbarn Travelling Theatre have brought their unique style to bear on it. Formed in the early 1970s, Footsbarn envision themselves as a troupe of strolling players in the medieval style. Founded in England, now based in France, they are a multi-national, multiple-language group who combine improvisation, tumbling, mime, puppetry, and traditional performance in productions which range from Shakespeare to Chekov. Footsbarn productions come with their own custom venue, a circus tent complete with tiered wooden seating and a ring. In such surroundings one would not expect a quiet, naturalistic drama and this current production is nothing of the sort.
    The Inspector is an energetic and very entertaining evening’s theatre. It is not subtle, nor is it as gripping or involving on a dramatic level as perhaps the story can be, but played as a broad farce with burlesque and clownish make-up, costumes, and masks, it works. In a sense this is both an appropriate and even necessary way to approach the material after over 160 years. The social and political content of the play is not negated, but it is realigned. The literally theatrical exaggeration of character and situation allows the audience to appreciate the broad strokes of the story and appreciate Gogol’s awareness of the absurdity of human social and personal behaviour without the beard-stroking and nodding which usually comes with this level of political satire.
    The performances are largely effective, although the accents of some members of the troupe occasionally make the dialogue difficult to understand (though the Dublin production is in English). The entire play is enacted at a high volume, which also tends to lead to hoarseness, which doesn’t help either. The physical acting is not bad, although the costumes do much of the work. It is played very much in the style of a pantomime which means that everything is broad and excessive. Once you accept this, everything falls into place quite nicely. Each of the ten actors plays multiple parts ranging from leads to non-vocal supporting characters.
    Shaji Karyat Velayudhan plays the ‘inspector’ himself, and though his ethnicity offers some interesting potential twists in an Irish context, the play is really not attuned to its local audience apart from one or two scattered references to contemporary Irish culture. This production began its 2000 run in India, where Velayudhan’s performance presumably would have been more resonant.
    The Inspector is an enjoyable experience which bravely brings a great amount of vigour to a perhaps overly-familiar scenario. It addresses the concerns of the original play while reinterpreting it according to the philosophy and fashion of the theatre company who perform it. The production is also interesting because the style and the circus motif make it an equally worthwhile recreation for younger audiences (despite some adult content and occasional profanity). Though it retains a
kinship with conventional clowning and tumbling, the content is more literary, which can only benefit younger spectators in the long run even if they are not fully cognisant of all of the play’s intricacies.

    Dublin, October 4, 2000                                                                               - Harvey O'Brien