About the PLAY
This is my favorite Russian joke. If you ask a Frenchman, “What do you wish for your country,” the Frenchman will say, “I wish for my country the poetry of Rimbaud, the beauty of Paris, the majesty of Napoleon.” If you ask a German the same question, the German will say, “I wish for my country the greatness of Goethe, the grandeur of Wagner, the philosophical insights of Nietzsche.” If you ask a Russian, “What do you wish for your country,” the Russian will say, “I wish that my neighbor’s cow should die!”
It’s been argued that the reason Russia and its people have always felt a bit backwards in comparison with their more cosmopolitan counterparts in Paris, London and Vienna is because the Renaissance and the Enlightenment skipped them completely. Nobody came by to give them the word. This tends to be blamed on the country’s vast expanses and terrible weather – destiny as defined by geography and mud.
This may explain why Russia, be it Tsarist, Soviet, or Putinesque, has such a wobbly respect for good government, civic standards and the law, and why the west has always looked down its nose at Russia. You can bring up Dostoevsky, Chekhov and The Nutcracker as much as you like, but it all gets trumped by Mrs. Khruschev’s style-sense.
Why then is The Government Inspector – surely one of the most á la Russe examples of Russia’s culture – such a universal play?
In one sense, it’s the classic case of a very original and specific idea – a hapless nobody is mistaken for a powerful government official by a group of corrupt, small town officials. But it’s also because its characters are so recognizable to any person in any country in any age who has attended a city council meeting, met a contractor, or had an inflated opinion of himself.
I first encountered The Government Inspector in college, in 1977. I played the Judge and knew at the first read through 30 years ago that in The Government Inspector Gogol had come up with one of the great, original comic situations – on a level with Volpone, Tartuffe, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Odd Couple. When I became a playwright and started to do adaptations, I often wished I could get a crack at The Government Inspector, so doing this new version at the Guthrie in 2008 was a kick.
Last, a question I would expect from the study guide: “Does The Government Inspector have contemporary significance?” I could answer that question with specific reference to some recent politicians and events, “but it would be wrong, that’s for sure.”*
– Jeffrey Hatcher (With apologies to the entire Russian people. And their cows.)
* Richard Nixon, telling John Dean he could come up with a million dollars to pay the Watergate burglars hush-money, and then suddenly remembering that his tape recorder was on.
About the PLAYWRIGHT
Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol was born in 1809 in Ukraine. Gogol’s father was the author of a number of plays based on Ukrainian popular tales. At Nézhin high school, he gained a reputation for his theatrical abilities, and for pranks and poor behavior. His father died in 1825, and Gogol began writing shortly after. He continued a regular correspondence with his mother, who provided him with many details for his early short stories, and who often exaggerated his achievements, causing Gogol continued embarrassment.
In 1829 he moved to St. Petersburg, and with the help of a friend he gained a post in one of the government ministries. His early narrative poem, Hans Küchelgarten (1829), written under a pseudonym, was met with critical disdain. Gogol burned all the copies he could find, and then took a trip to Germany. Between the years 1831 and 1834 he worked in the civil service, for literary reviews, studied painting, briefly and apparently disastrously was a professor of History at the University of St. Petersburg, where one of his students happened to include Turgenev.
With the publication of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka (1831), a collection of short stories, Gogol received entree to all the leading literary salons. He was introduced to Zhukovsky, the romantic poet, and to Pushkin, his idol, who was a continuing influence. He wrote a number of still well-known short stories. Diary of a Madman appeared in 1834, The Nose in 1836, and The Overcoat in 1842.
Gogol’s most famous play, The Inspector General, premiered in 1836, and was a massive sensation, arousing critics and defenders on all sides, gaining the approval and laughter of the Tsar. Gogol was stunned when The Government Inspector came to be interpreted by many, despite Nicholas I’s patronage of the play, as an indictment of Tsarism.
Gogol fled the attention, visiting Germany, Switzerland, France and settling in Rome. It was there that Gogol wrote his major novel, Dead Souls. Gogol claimed that the story was suggested by Pushkin in a conversation in 1835. Gogol conceived the book as an epic poem in three parts, perhaps modeled on Dante’s Inferno. The first part was published in 1842 and was an immediate success. Gogol struggled for the rest of his life to complete the work.
Except for short visits to Russia in 1839-40 and 1841-42, Gogol was abroad for twelve years. The first edition of Gogol’s collected works was published in 1842. It made him one of the most popular Russian writers. Two years before his return, Gogol published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (1847), in which he upheld the autocratic tsarist regime and the patriarchal Russian way of life. The book was received with disappointment by progressives who had seen Gogol’s works as examples of social criticism.
Gogol completed the play Marriage in 1841. It was published and first performed in 1842 in St. Petersburg and in 1843 in Moscow. It was disliked, perhaps primarily for its scathing depiction of ordinary Russians, but also possibly because of its satisfaction-defying ending. According to one source, it was “hissed off the stage”. Again, Gogol fled the response to his work and returned to Rome.
In his last years, he became increasingly prey to religious mania and despair. He had suffered intestinal and stomach ailments for most of his life, and they worsened. He made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1848, but was bitterly disappointed in the lack of feeling that the journey kindled. He returned to Russia and fell under the influence of a spiritual director who told him to destroy his writings as they were sinful. In the spring of 1852, he burned the second part of Dead Souls, and died 10 days later, having endured a severe regime of fasting, bleeding, and leeching.
According to one source, his last words were an old Russian saying, “And I shall laugh with a bitter laugh.” These words were placed on his tomb.
QUOTATIONS FROM NIKOLAI GOGOL:
Laughter is more significant and profound than men imagine. Only what is somber disturbs, and laughter is luminous. …Let us restore to laughter its true significance! Let us wrest it from those who have turned it into a frivolous worldly blasphemy that does not distinguish between good and evil.
Each action and character, taken separately, is true, alive, lifted from nature, while all in all it seems monstrous, exaggerated, caricatured, so that leaving the theater you involuntarily ask yourself, “Do such people really exist?”
Now I see what it means to be a writer of comedies. The faintest glimmer of truth—and entire classes are up in arms against you.
Let us now laugh and laugh as much as possible. Long live comedy. But what sort of comedy is there without truth or malice!
About the ADAPTOR
JEFFREY HATCHER
BROADWAY: “Never Gonna Dance.” OFF-BROADWAY: “Three Viewings” and “A Picasso” at Manhattan Theatre Club; “Scotland Road” and “The Turn of the Screw” at Primary Stages; “Tuesdays with Morrie (with Mitch Albom) at The Minetta Lane; “Murder by Poe,” “The Turn of the Screw,” and “The Spy” at The Acting Company; “Neddy” at American Place; and “Fellow Travelers” at Manhattan Punchline. OTHER PLAYS/THEATERS: “Compleat Female Stage Beauty,” “Mrs. Mannerly,” “Murderers,” “Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club,” “Smash,” “Korczak’s Children,” “The Government Inspector,” “John Gabriel Borkman,” “An Enemy of the People,” ”Cousin Bette,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and others at The Guthrie, Old Globe, Yale Rep, Geffen, Seattle Rep, Cincinnati Playhouse, Cleveland Playhouse, South Coast Rep, Arizona Theater Company, Children’s Theater Company, Intiman, Denver Center, OSF, ASF, Milwaukee Rep, Repertory Theater of St. Louis, Actors Theater of Louisville, Philadelphia Theater Company, Asolo and dozens more in the U.S. and abroad. FILM/ TV: “Stage Beauty,” “Casanova,” “The Duchess” and episodes of “Columbo.” GRANTS/AWARDS: NEA, TCG, Lila Wallace Fund, Rosenthal New Play Prize, Frankel Award, Charles MacArthur Fellowship Award, Edgerton Grant, McKnight Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Barrymore Award Best New Play (“A Picasso”), and L.A. Critics Circle Award Best Adaptation(“Cousin Bette”). He is a member of The Playwrights Center, the Dramatists Guild, the Writers Guild, and New Dramatists.
Red Bull Theater 