Lantern's "The Government Inspector'

Comedy is hard. Farce is harder. Reviving a nearly 200-year-old farce is just about the hardest of all.

Such was the task undertaken by director David O'Connor in reviving Nikolai Gogol's 1836 comedy, The Government Inspector, now at the Lantern Theater. And, you know what? It's a howling success.

Gogol's plot has the simplicity and timelessness of all great theater. Ivan Alexandrovich Khlestakov (Luigi Sottile) is an impecunious young gentleman plunked down with his manservant Osip (David Ingram) in what the program describes as "some little town in Russia" surrounded on all sides by 300 miles of nothing. Khlestakov is down to his last kopeck when he is mistaken for a government inspector from St. Petersburg, and suddenly finds himself wined, dined and bribed by everyone from the mayor (Seth Reichgott) on down.

Khlestakov is at first uncertain of his bearings, but, slowly realizing that he is the beneficiary of a case of mistaken identity, he begins to act the part of the imperious bureaucrat with zest. Sexual favors from the mayor's wife, Anna (Sarah Sanford), come with the role too, although she must compete with her mother and daughter, both angling for Khlestakov themselves. The young gentleman, now thoroughly enjoying himself, is loath to leave his bed of clover, but the cagey Osip whisks him out of town just ahead of his unmasking. The townsfolk barely have time to digest their folly when, like an inexorable blow of fate, the news arrives that the real government inspector is on his way.

Between absurdity and terror

Gogol's particular genius was to take satire to the point of absurdity, and then just a little past it to the realm of terror. To the lost and nameless town on the steppe, the descent of officialdom from distant Petersburg is something like that of a malevolent god on Argos or Thebes. As in Greek tragedy, where the god disguises himself both to conceal his mischief and to see who will properly identify and worship him, so Khlestakov's quite honest initial confusion is taken for deliberate play-acting by the locals. It is the Greek tragic theme stood on its head as farce: not the god who knows perfectly well who he is and the victims who fail to recognize his divinity, but a fop down on his luck who is mistaken for the tsar's own emissary.

Yet Gogol's townspeople are as genuinely terrified (and their heads as easily turned) as if they were dealing with a god, which in effect a great or even a middling imperial official is in their little world. When the mayor, his pockets emptied and his manhood as good as cuckolded, realizes that he must go through the whole business again, he casts a mute and despairing look toward heaven, as if some deity were in fact using him for sport.

Kafkaesque, before Kafka

Gogol's play leads straight toward Kafka, and in some respects toward Beckett as well. These writers, too, dealt with mysterious authority figures who fail to arrive when expected or provide the order imputed to them; they, too, mingled farce with terror. In short, they were Gogolesque.

Both Armina LaManna's translation and David O'Connor's production bring out this double-edged quality, and the laughter they elicit, though hearty, is likewise equivocal. The players— there are five, with Anthony Lawton rounding out the quintet and all but Reichgott playing multiple roles— are fine. Luigi Sottile, a Lantern veteran, drives the show with a highly kinetic and delightfully inventive Khlestakov; Seth Reichgott's mayor is an excellent foil; and Sarah Sanford negotiates the female roles with comedic aplomb. Meghan Jones' Constructivist set suggests a touch of Meyerhold, while Millie Hiibel's costumes and puppets are droll and inventive, and Jeff Lorenz's score and sound design play a crucial role. This show is a winner on all counts.