Mary Testa, Michael McGrath, Michael Urie, and Talene
Monahon photos Carol Rosegg
By Ron Cohen
Believe it or
not, some two hours of Russian-themed political corruption can provide you with
a rollicking good time. You just have to forget our current imbroglios in Washington, DC, and turn yourself over to Red Bull Theater’s exuberant mounting of The
Government Inspector.
This
production of the Russian comic masterwork by Nikolai Gogol, sometimes known as
The Inspector General and dating back to 1836, uses a sprightly
adaptation by American playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Hatcher keeps things in 19th
Century Russia, but gives the dialogue a bright contemporary spin. And Jesse
Berger, artistic director of Red Bull, known especially for its fondness for
Jacobean revenge plays, demonstrates a grand flair for comedy in his
appropriate anything-for-a-laugh staging. The approach is made valid by his
14-person cast loaded with superlative farceurs and headed by the especially
superlative Michael Urie.
Things take
place in a backwater town, where bribery, incompetence and political favors and
expediency are the everyday stuff of life. (Is everything old really new again,
as Peter Allen once sang?) The new hospital has been so badly constructed that
it’s not possible to get full-size beds into the rooms. Turn it into a
children’s hospital, says the mayor.
The mayor and
his colleagues are shaken to their rotten cores, though, when rumors start that
a powerful inspector from the Czar has come to town undercover. It so happens
that at the same time, a ne’er-do-well lowly clerk, recently fired from his
job, has wound up in town, and is rooming above the stable at local inn. His
name, in full, is Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov. He has lost his money playing
dice, is suffering from a hangover and pondering how handsome he’ll look should
he commit suicide.
And who should
the town moguls mistake for the undercover inspector? Of course, it’s Ivan, who
immediately becomes the confused but willing recipient of all the town has to
offer, including a riotously drunken dinner at the mayor’s home, handfuls of
cash, and even the mayor’s petulant daughter. It all goes on until Ivan leaves
town, and the officials discover their mistake, only to face another shocker
with the final curtain.
: Talene Monahon and Michael Urie
Urie makes
Ivan a totally engaging fop, combining a louche delivery of laugh lines, almost
reminiscent of Groucho Marx, with daredevil physical comedy. His drunken
attempt to sit on an uncooperative piano stool, whose wheels have a mind of
their own, is a prolonged piece of masterful laugh-getting. Ending the show’s
first half, his even drunker fall from the second level of the bi-level set
into the audience is worthy of a medal for valor, perhaps even a Tony, if Tonys
were given for Off-Broadway bravery.
Urie has a
perfect foil in Michael McGrath’s mayor, coloring almost every line with either
a controlled fury or deep exasperation. It’s almost as if McGrath were
channeling Nathan Lane in his highest dudgeon. But he definitely makes the role
his own.
Michael McGrath (forefront) with Luis Moreno and Mary Lou
Rosato
Such praise
is not meant, however, to slight anybody else. Just about everybody contributes
to the hilarity. As the mayor’s salacious wife, the inestimable Mary Testa
keeps the innuendos coming in forthright fashion. The bumbling town officials
include Tom Alan Robbins as the judge who allows his bailiff to raise geese in
the jury box because they sound “so cute;” David Manis as the principal of the
school where “a failing student is made head of the class if his father donates
a new gymnasium,’ and Stephen DeRosa as the director of the aforementioned
hospital, who has hired from an exchange program a doctor who speaks an
incomprehensible language, played with a mastery of gibberish by James Rana.
Others are
Arnie Burton, as the fey postmaster who opens and reads all mail before it’s
delivered (he also doubles unrecognizably as Ivan’s snide servant), and Luis
Moreno as the police chief, whose force, as described, would make the Keystone
Cops look like a model of efficiency. Ryan Garbayo and Ben Mehl score visually
as well as aurally as a tweedledum-and-tweedledee pair of gabby, roly-poly
landowners, and Talene Monahon, as the mayor’s daughter, impressively turns
frustration into high-decibel shrieking. Mary Lou Rosato and Kelly Hutchinson
bring distinctive touches of grotesquerie to assorted servants and citizens of
the town.
To be sure,
not every comic bit is a side-splitter. Some lines have the familiar flavor of
old-time vaudeville or burlesque. “Mine was a very cultured upbringing,” says
the mayor’s wife. “We had a book…”
But the bits
come so thick and fast, you don’t have time to ponder the misfires. Grin and
bear them. But do so take some time to appreciate the aptness of Tilly Grimes’
blatantly character-defining costumes, and the eye-filling architecture of
Alexis Distler’s two-level set, meticulously defining the play’s’ three
different playing areas. The first level is divided between the study in the
mayor’s house and Ivan’s room at the inn. The upper level depicts in all its
florid elegance the expansive sitting room of the mayor’s house.
Tom
Alan Robbins, Stephen DeRosa, James Rana, David Manis, Luis, Moreno, Ryan
Garbayo, and Ben Mehl
Toward the
end of the show, the mayor contemplating how he and his cohorts have been taken
in, declares: “Centuries from now they’ll still be laughing at us.” As far as
some 171years go at least, he’s absolutely correct.
Off-Broadway
play
Playing at
The Duke on 42nd Street
229 West 42nd
Street
646-223-3010
Ext. 8
Dukeon42.org
Playing until
June 24
NOTE: The show is being extended with a move to New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, for six weeks, July 5--August 20.