Untitled - Aberystwyth Arts Centre

29 Pages·2013·1.38 MB·English

Contents
page
Introduction for teachers 3
The Government Inspector 4

Nikolai Gogol his Life and Work 5
The Historical Context of the Play 7
Past Productions 8
Synopsis 11
Themes and Issues 13
Characters 14
How Theatre works: 18

The Director 18
Designer 20
Composer 21
Stage Manager 23
How to become an actor 24
Review writing 26
2
Introduction
This education resource has been compiled to accompany Aberystwyth
Arts Centre and Communicado’s touring production of the play The
Government Inspector, by Nikolai Gogol, adapted by Adrian Mitchell.
The pack is designed to facilitate further learning and discussion follow-
ing a visit to the performance and also suggests curriculum links to the
content of the play. The pack has a twin focus: firstly – a summary of
key information, themes and issues arising directly from the play. Sec-
ondly, resources connected to the interpretation, process and preparation
for the production, including the rehearsal process and the design of the
production.
You can download additional copies of this pack from:
http://www.aberystwythartscentre.co.uk/resources
Please contact me should you have any questions or comments about the
resource pack or about the support available to schools from Aberyst-
wyth Arts Centre’s Performing Arts Department.
I would like to thank the cast and creative team for their generous contri-
butions to the resource pack and Creative Scotland and the Arts Council
of Wales for their support.
Gill Ogden
Head of Performing Arts
Aberystwyth Arts Centre
[email protected] 01970 621512
Spring 2013
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Cast List
The Governor Stephen Marzella
Marya Kate Quinnell
Bobchinsky Barrie Hunter
Dobchinsky Ieuan Rhys
The Postmaster Jâms Thomas
The Charity Commissioner George Drennan
Anna Pauline Knowles
Judge Malcolm Shields
Avdotya/Musician Wendy Weatherby
Khlestakov Oliver Lavery
ProduCtion team
Director Gerry Mulgrew
Written by Nikolai Gogol
Adapted by Adrian Mitchell
Designer Jessica Brettle
Lighting Designer Sergey Jakovsky
Musical Director George Drennan
Movement Director Malcolm Shields
Producer Alan Hewson
Production Manager Nick Bache
Head of Performing Arts Gill Ogden
Deputy Stage Manager Fran Craig
Assistant Stage Manager Neil Anderson
Technical Stage Manager Danny Owen
Set Technician Pete Lochery
Wardrobe Supervisor Jessica Brettle
Wardrobe Assistant Christine Dove
Scenic Artist Kirsty Glover
Transport Fly By Nite
Driver Andy Evans
Communicado Assistant Producer Emma Campbell
Aberystwyth Arts Centre Administration Maris Davies
Press and Marketing Trish McGuinness
Louise Amery
Rachel Scurlock
Alexey Bogdanov
Photography Douglas Robertson
Keith Morris
Copyright agent for the United Agents
Estate of Adrian Mitchell [email protected]
Special Thanks to Royal Lyceum Theatre, Citizen Theatre, Tron
Theatre, Perth Theatre, Pitlochry Theatre
This adaptation of THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR was directed by Richard Eyre,
firstly at the Nottingham Playhouse and then in his first season at the National Theatre,
London in January 1985, with Rik Mayall in the lead.
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Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
The writer – his life and work

1809 Born March 20th at Sorochintsy in the Ukraine. Gogol’s family
were minor gentry.
He had three sisters and one brother.
His father wrote comic plays for private performances for the gentry.
His mother was said to be superstitious and neurotic.
As a child he was surrounded by folk tales and superstition.
1828 Left school and went to live in St Petersburg where he worked as
a civil servant. He also auditioned unsuccessfully for the Imperial
Theatre.
1829 Published a narrative poem, Hans Kuchelgarten under a pseudo-
nym which was badly received. Gogol bought up all the unsold copies,
burned them and went to Germany for 2 months.
1831 Became a history teacher in a young women’s college in St Peters-
burg.
First met the writer and dramatist Pushkin, a major literary influence on
Gogol, mentioned in The Government Inspector.
1831-2 Published Evenings On Farm near Dikanka, a collection of
Ukrainian village tales, an immediate critical hit.
1834 Appointed Professor of History at the University of St Petersburg,
specialising in the Middle Ages in Europe. It seems he was not a good
teacher but passionate about his subject.
During the 1830s Gogol visited Paris and saw many plays and operas.
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1835 Published short story collections Mirgorod and Arabesques, which
included The Portrait, Nevsky Prospect, Diary of a Madman
Wrote the first draft of Revizor, later known as The Government Inspector.
The play was based on an idea given to him by Pushkin, when Gogol asked him
for a good subject for a satyrical comedy.
Gave up teaching, and began work on Dead Souls.
1836 April 19th – first performance of Revizor at Alexandrinksy Theatre, St
Petersburg and on May 25th at Maly Theatre, Moscow.
Left Russia to live in Rome for 11 years
The Nose published.
Gogol Began an 8 year process of rewriting The Government Inspector.
1842 Dead Souls published.
1843 Collected Works published, including The Overcoat. The plays Marriage
and The Gamblers are performed in Moscow.
1845 Burned the second volume of Dead Souls – destroying 5 years work.
1846 Published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends – a
reactionary defence of Tsarist autocracy and serfdom, receiving an hostile re-
sponse.
1848 Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in search of spiritual enlightenment.
Returned to Russia.
Gogol became chronically ill, through self-mortification and malnutrition attrib-
uted to religious mania.
1852 February 11th – burned the rewritten second volume of Dead Souls.
February 21st – died in Moscow, aged 42.
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The Historical Context of the Play
Society:
Gogol lived at a time of great intellectual change in Russia where the traditional
Russian values of the Middle Ages were in decline and new ‘European’ ideas of
capitalism, community and self-identity were beginning to emerge.
Although it was some time before the social inequalities of the old system were
to be broken down, this more open thinking did lead to a rapid influx of literature,
philosophy, music and ideas from Western Europe.
Some of the greatest Russian writers emerged during this time including Turgenev,
Pushkin and of course Gogol.
Gogol greatly admired the literature of Greece and of the Western European
Middle Ages, as well as the German philosophers.
He was an idealist, believing that Russia had a divine mission.
However, politically, there is a contradiction in his work, whilst he states that he
supports the existing feudal system, with landlords ruling over peasants, Gogol’s
greatest works, such as The Government Inspector, show an impossible and crum-
bling social structure, leading to a sense of an absurd world inhabited by grotesque
characters and pointing inevitably to the need for social change.
Theatre:
- There was no professional theatre in Russia before the 1750s (in England
it began around 1570).
- Before then theatre was limited to seasonal and religious rituals.
- In 1702 Peter the Great set up a theatre in Moscow which staged plays by
visiting companies from France and Italy.
- The first Russian theatre company was set up in1756 with the support of
the royal family.
- They performed comedies, tragedies and history plays in the French style
and also adaptations of Shakespeare.
- In the 18th century aristocrats set up’ peasant theatres’ on their estates,
creating performances by their own workers.
- In 1779 the first acting school was established.
- 1765 – 1840 – the first play by Russian dramatists began to be performed.
- The subjects of these plays included comedies social abuse and injustice,
usually caused by the excessive behaviour of individuals rather than the
system itself.
- The form known as Vaudeville was the most popular type of theatre
around the 1850s. Vaudeville is similar to today’s Romantic Comedies
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the plots are usually about young lovers who have to deal with obstacles to
their happiness and the plays are interspersed with comedy and songs.
- Whilst serious political plays were censored by the government, Vaude-
ville was encouraged as it was seen as non-threatening.
- Gogol performed in a Vaudevillian play whilst at school. Though critical
of Vaudeville once he became a professional writer, the parody and comic
elements in his work show its influence. Elements in The Government
Inspector include use of word games, puns and play on the meanings of
people’s names.
- Another popular form was the traditional puppet play. These folk pays
often included stock characters with comic names and contemporary refer-
ences, such as the ‘boastful Pole’ and the ‘daring Cossack’. Gogol’s father
wrote such plays.
Absolute government control over the theatre did not end until 1892.
Past Productions
- The first production of the play in 1836 in St Petersburg was greeted
by bewilderment; the audience had come expecting the usual farce, and
whilst the production included many comic elements, the characters were
disturbingly realistic and lifelike. The play was considered by many to be
an insult, although reportedly the Tsar had enjoyed it. Gogol was de-
scribed as ‘an enemy of the state’.
- The 1870 production of the revised text at the same theatre, instead of
staging the performance in contemporary dress, set the play in the 1830s.
- Stanivlaski’s 1908 production of The Government Inspector was staged
at the Moscow Art Theatre to celebrate the centenary of Gogol’s birth.
The production was highly naturalistic; great care was take that the set
and props should be authentic and that the small town should appear
identifiable as it would have been in the 1830s. Against this background
Stanislavski portrayed most of the characters as grotesque in an abstract
exaggerated way, with only Khlestakov and Osip appearing to be ‘real’.
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- Stanivlaski’s 1921 production also presented the grotesque in a tragic-
comic style, as if the characters were all in the grip of a mass psychosis.
It was in this production that for the first time the famous lines at the
end of Act II scene 2 spoken by the Governor were addressed directly to
the audience:
‘What are you laughing at? You’re laughing at yourselves!’
The character of Khlestakov was played by the famous actor Michael
Chekhov as a childish dandy who grows into a psychopathic monster
during the course of the play.
- Many Russian post-revolutionary productions of the play were highly
stylized and avant-garde, including one which had all pink settings, and
one that featured a toilet at the centre of the stage.
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- Meyerhold’s 1926 production in Moscow was combined Gogol’s origi-
nal vision with his own experimental principles, uniting elements of
Commedia del Arte, symbolism, expressionism, pantomime and oriental
movement techniques with continuous musical accompaniment. Meyer-
hold adapted the play for his production, borrowing characters from some
of Gogol’s other works. Like our own production, Meyerhold’s was set
against an arc of double doors the width of the stage.

Meyerhold’s set for the 1926 production of The Government Inspector
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http://www.britannica.com
- Most English productions have been adaptations rather than complete
translations of the original text.
Peter Hall’s 1966 production set the action in rural ‘East Anglia, adapting
the speech to the dialect of the region.
In the 60s and 70s Henry Livings and Adrian Mitchell adapted the play
for the Radio and the stage, using the North of England as the setting.
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