The Government Inspector

på New World Stages / Stage 4

Tipsa

Tweet!

This New York premiere of acclaimed playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of The Government Inspector offers a hilarious reminder of the terrifying timelessness of bureaucracy and buffoonery. All politics are local. Gogol’s deeply silly satire of small-town corruption offers a riotous portrait of rampaging self-delusion. When the crooked leadership of a provincial village discovers that an undercover inspector is coming to root out their commonplace corruption, the town weaves a web of bribery, lies, and utter madness.

"The pleasures afforded by this breakneck show — directed by Jesse Berger and featuring a virtuosic cast led by a path-clearing cyclone of silliness called Michael Urie — are as old as the days when cave dwellers discovered that human stupidity was really kind of funny, as well as potentially tragic. It’s an awareness that has since fueled entertainments as different as commedia dell’arte and Saturday Night Live....Jesse Berger has assembled a doozy of a cast, which includes such masters of mayhem as Arnie Burton, Stephen DeRosa, Michael McGrath, Mary Testa and the peerless Michael Urie.” - Ben Brantley, The New York Times - Critic's Pick