Review of the play “The Inspector General” directed by Avtandil Varsimashvili at the National Theater of Hungary

The National Theater of Hungary hosted the premiere of the play based on Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” directed by the famous Georgian director Avtandil Varsimashvili. Esther Steinbock, closely following the disappearances and appearances of Russian plays on European stages in the new reality, she could not miss this event.

The artistic director of the Tbilisi Russian Theater named after Griboedov, Avtandil Varsimashvili, placed the heroes of “The Inspector General” not in an old provincial town or even in today’s regional center, but far from urban civilization, somewhere in the forests and swamps. In the middle of the stage there is a puddle, here and there there are thickets of feather grass, and chopped off lifeless trees stick out everywhere. And also buckets suspended from the sky, now rising and now falling against the will of people – of course, this space (the director himself came up with the scenography) is not everyday, but metaphorical. Is it possible to assume that in the world where the heroes of history lived, some kind of environmental disaster occurred and that now everything in it is poisoned and the climate is spoiled? Yes, such a cause of total disaster is hinted at by two corrugated sewer pipes on the sides of the proscenium, so large that people can easily crawl through them, and they sometimes serve as “doors” leading to the stage.

But still, the true reason for the apocalypse that we are shown is different – it was the moralist Gogol who wrote, and not a modern environmental activist. Of course, it is that human society, reduced to a group of characters in The Inspector General, has sinned so much that it is punished by exile. Those who are designated by Gogol as officials have become somewhat wild, declassed wanderers with shabby suitcases of belongings in their hands. All their charitable institutions, courts and schools have long become phantoms, it is unlikely that they even have a roof over their heads – there is nothing on the stage except a toilet-like booth that could be mistaken for a home. Vagrants cover themselves from the rain with suitcases.

Where Gogol comes from and where Khlestakov goes, we do not know for sure – you never know what he himself tells. Therefore, a non-rational explanation of the nature of heroes has a venerable stage tradition: many directors, even before Varsimashvili, were able to find and enlarge the “particle of the devil” in both Khlestakov and his servant Osip. He seemed to follow the same path, but came to a completely different balance of power. Not only are Khlestakov and Osip not master and servant, but aliens from some other spheres, but they also, apparently, were sent to this world on a very cruel mission. Two young men, apparently, are indeed auditors, like the gods from Brecht’s “The Good Man of Szechwan,” they are tasked with checking whether the righteous remain in the forest.

And if they were not found, a couple of auditors were authorized to prosecute. Varsimashvili’s famous scenes of bribery are turned into a trial of sinners, and each of them faces his own type of inquiry and his own form of sentencing – they become witty and inventive theatrical sketches – although the verdicts are invariably guilty. And every time there is something like a judge’s gavel: thunder from heaven and the mocking run of the holy fool from backstage to backstage, at the back of the stage. By the way, if classical justice should be done blindfolded, then here it is done with hidden hands – Khlestakov’s robe has such long sleeves that the palms are not visible. However, this secrecy does not at all prevent him from first being naked to the waist, and then, judging by the voluptuous sounds from the toilet closet, using the mayor’s daughter without shame.

It is difficult to say how convincing Varsimashvili’s concept would have looked if not for the actors of the National Theater. The director from Tbilisi is one of the brightest exponents of the Georgian theater school; he speaks a sharp, paradoxical language that requires instant transformations, everyday reactions, and, ultimately, temperament from the actors. More than once I have seen performances staged by Georgian directors outside Georgia, in which the actors, even good ones, could not “appropriate” the director’s suggestions. This meeting took place in a performance by the Hungarian National Theater. The mayor and his wife are especially good – Zsolt Trill and Nelly Syuch, former artists of the Hungarian drama theater in the Transcarpathian city of Beregovo. When the director of the theater, Attila Vidnyansky, moved to Budapest and became the head of the National Theater, he brought with him part of the troupe, and now those viewers who remember the young Bereg actors from festival shows of the 1990s can recognize them as real masters, playing clearly and agile, with humor and inner tenacity. So, in relation to this “The Inspector General,” the famous theatrical joke-trap “tell me, who plays the title role?” loses its edge.

In general, Avtandil Varsimashvili seems to change the nature of the humor of Gogol’s masterpiece. There are many funny and witty episodes in the play, but the comedy seems to be losing its caustic satirical arrows. What kind of satire is there if the character created by the director, a priest, reads from the stage the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from the biblical Book of Genesis. And when, at the end of the play, the heroes, huddled in a crowd, as if on an island, get wet in the rain, forever damned and rejected, you want to feel sorry for them and put in a good word for them. To whom, let everyone decide for themselves.