THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Nikolai Gogol, adapted and directed by Patrick Myles
Marylebone Theatre, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Rd, London NW1 6XT until June 15, 2024
This is a total hoot, a tonic in our troubled times. Gogol's great 1836 satirical comedy about hypocrites, hysterics and hustlers is eternal, the enduring power of it being that it doesn't need 'updating', we all recognize the pettiness of small town bureaucracy and greed. Gogol's style here amazingly predated Absurdism but yet it's not arch in any way, and its broad appeal has attracted some top TV talents. Director Patrick Myles has done a wonderfully fresh adaptation, giving it a cocky, modern edge which manages to retain its Russianness while firmly locating it deep in the English Midlands during Victorian times.
The great farcical plot revolves around a clique of corrupt officials of a small rural backwater, headed by the Governor, who react with panic to the news that an incognito inspector will soon be arriving from London to investigate them. Their flurry of activity to cover up their considerable grifting and corruption is upset by news that a suspicious person has been spotted living it up at the local inn and not paying. They decide he must be the Inspector and set out to win him over. He's nothing of the sort but rather a foppish, low-level civil servant with a fanciful imagination, but he soon realizes he's onto a great thing as the money and favors roll in.
It works here because of a cast who are all TV comedy stars with Dan Skinner (famous for his hapless Greek alter-ego Angelos Epithemiou) playing the Governor, here called Swashprattle. Stars of TV's hit BBC comedy Ghosts Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Martha Howe-Douglas play the other leads. He plays the 'Inspector', here named Percy Fopdoodle, while she plays, with a fabulous Brummie flourish, the dim, grasping, social-climbing wife of the Governor. Both are impeccable physical comedians as is Chayta Gupta, as the daughter Connie, whose pratfalls, while dressed in a pink barrel dress that makes her resemble an animated blancmange, are a joy to behold.
Myles whisks up a great ensemble cast (there isn't a weak link) into some glorious physical antics, with kudos to Movement Director, Kate Tydman for some Marx Brothers-like staging. Myles' adaptation is rich in gags, some corny, some bang up to date. The characters are played as archetypes, which ups the laughter quotient, but their ploys and their collective delusions ring totally true and show how corrupt power in the end always destroys itself. Each of the officials in turn tries to bribe the Inspector, having no qualms about selling out the others.
Skinner is perfect as the exasperated, mediocre, small town Napoleon (he even has the uniform) whose small-minded greed sets the tone for his Rotten Borough. Smith-Bynoe has the hustler Inspector's smooth patrician charm down perfectly and Daniel Miller is a great comic foil to him as the wry, weary servant, Fudgel.
Melanie Jane Brookes' great set (this is the biggest stage for an 'off West End' venue) is both perfectly municipal and perfectly Victorian and her exaggerated costumes for this coterie of grifters are also spot-on.
This theater, just going for a year and only a short stroll from Baker Street tube, is a great addition to the London scene, and one to watch.
