Tag Archives: Ellie Kurttz

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

★★★★

Chichester Festival Theatre

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

Chichester Festival Theatre

★★★★

“brims with swearing, colloquialisms, double entendres, and joyful absurdity”

Nikolai Gogol’s razor-sharp satire The Government Inspector gets a bawdy and riotous reimagining in this new adaptation by Phil Porter, directed with pantomimic glee by Gregory Doran in his Chichester debut. Fuelled by farcical energy, the production is packed with verbal wit and physical comedy that rarely misses a beat.

The plot is deceptively simple: a small, corrupt provincial town panics at news that a government inspector is due to arrive incognito. When they mistake a feckless young civil servant for the feared official, chaos ensues. Enter Tom Rosenthal as Khlestakov, the supposed inspector, who quickly realises he can exploit the town’s credulous officials – a rollicking parade of grotesques, each more deluded than the last – for money, food, flattery, and more.

Rosenthal, best known for Friday Night Dinner and Plebs, brings his trademark hapless charm to Khlestakov, a delightfully louche fantasist revelling in the absurd power thrust upon him. In between extracting money, goods, and favours, he sets about seducing the Mayor’s wife (Sylvestra Le Touzel) – gloriously ridiculous, flirtatious, and determined to outshine her own daughter – and the daughter herself (Laurie Ogden), whose wide-eyed naïvety is tinged with a quiet desperation to be noticed. Ideally, he’d have both.

On first meeting Khlestakov in his sleazy accommodation, he seems somewhat subdued – especially compared with the cavalcade of comic officials who dominate early on with scene-stealing flourishes. But Rosenthal’s performance builds into a compelling piece of comic buffoonery – especially in a hilariously drunken return to the Mayor’s house after a boozy lunch. He is ably supported by Nick Haverson as Osip, his sardonic, long-suffering manservant.

Lloyd Hutchinson gives a standout performance as the morally bankrupt Mayor, his sweaty desperation rendered with delicious physicality. He’s joined by a motley crew of officials, each scrambling to ingratiate themselves and slip the impostor a few hundred roubles. There are strong comic turns throughout: Joe Dixon’s pompous Judge, whose knees keep giving way; Christopher Middleton’s cigar-fumbling Head of Schools; Oscar Pearce’s gleefully self-serving Charity Commissioner, all too happy to reveal the Mayor’s misdeeds; and Reuben Johnson’s jittery Postmaster. Miltos Yerolemou and Paul Rider are particularly entertaining as Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky – a Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee pair of nosy busybodies, obsessed with their own imagined importance.

These absurd officials are starkly contrasted with the town’s merchants, who visit the supposed inspector seeking justice, only to be swindled again. Leigh Quinn’s Sergeant’s Widow delivers a quietly devastating moment as she recounts being publicly beaten, revealing the scars on her back. It’s a grim reminder that beneath the foolery lie real-world consequences.

Porter’s script is sprightly and accessible, injecting Gogol’s 19th-century satire with contemporary irreverence. It brims with swearing, colloquialisms, double entendres, and joyful absurdity. Standout lines include Khlestakov describing the Mayor’s wife as a “randy old honey badger” and boasting he has “a pie in every finger” – playful, outrageous, and unexpectedly sharp.

The opening scene hints at something more substantial. The Mayor, pondering why St Petersburg might be sending a government inspector to their backwater, dismisses the idea of war – confidently assuring his colleagues that Russia would never be interested in such a remote place. It’s a fleeting but pointed allusion to contemporary geopolitics and a knowing nod to Gogol’s Ukrainian identity (acknowledged in the programme). While this moment garners a chuckle, such modern resonance is quickly left behind, as the production commits more fully to good-natured farce than to drawing serious parallels with 21st-century politics.

The production embraces the meta-theatricality woven into Gogol’s text. The characters’ frantic need to impress is echoed in the actors’ heightened delivery, exaggerated movement (thanks to movement director Mike Ashcroft), and frequent breaking of the fourth wall. The final “frozen tableau” – the moment of stunned silence when the real inspector is announced – is held just long enough to become hilariously awkward, prompting uneasy titters and a ripple of recognition.

Francis O’Connor’s set design captures a world teetering between grandeur and decay. The Mayor’s office-turned-drawing-room features filing cabinets bursting with paper and oversized doors that suggest delusions of grandeur. The inn’s squalid room, with its grimy skylight and claustrophobic scale, offers a stark contrast – and provides an excellent setup for a well-executed physical comedy. O’Connor’s costumes are a visual feast: lavish, absurd, and sharply attuned to each character’s vanity and social pretensions, particularly in the cases of the Mayor’s preening wife and posturing daughter.

Doran keeps the whole machine ticking with precision. The pace never flags. This is a lively and well-crafted revival that entertains with gusto. While it flirts with deeper contemporary parallels through its satirical edge, it ultimately settles for broad, enjoyable farce – and a very enjoyable one it is.



THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

Chichester Festival Theatre

Reviewed on 1st May 2025

by Ellen Cheshire

Photography by Ellie Kurttz

 

 

 


 

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE | ★★★½ | January 2025
REDLANDS | ★★★★ | September 2024

 

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

APEX PREDATOR

★★

Hampstead Theatre

APEX PREDATOR

Hampstead Theatre

★★

“the entire cast do as much as they can with the raw tools they’ve been given”

Has the time arrived for a new vampire story? John Donnelly thinks so. But unfortunately, his newest play, Apex Predator, can’t quite seem to decide what it wants to be — a commentary on postpartum depression and psychosis, or a horror-comedy about vampirism as an allegory for modern life. In trying to straddle the line between both worlds, it never really succeeds at either.

From the opening moment, we are reminded that London is a city of violence. Not only that, but no one in this city is going to help you, not really. If you expect to survive, you’re going to have to be strong. But Mia (Sophie Melville) is hardly feeling strong at the moment — her newborn, Isla, won’t feed. Her son, Alfie (Callum Knowelden), is being bullied at school. And on top of it all, her husband Joe (Bryan Dick) is sometimes away for days at his secretive job. When he does come home, they mostly bicker. Mia is exhausted. The neighbours are a nuisance, throwing parties with loud music, forcing Mia to bounce Isla to sleep night after night, and Joe seems… well, entirely unbothered by this. If anything, he appears agitated that his wife is having a tough time. Enter Alfie’s new art teacher, Ana (Laura Whitmore), who may just be able to offer Mia a way forward. The premise is interesting, if a bit old hat. How do we protect ourselves, but especially our children, in a world that grows more dangerous by the day? It’s unfortunate that each idea in the script feels under-developed, spawning into some new thread, while we ache for the previous thread to be tied.

Blanche McIntyre’s direction is confusing at times. Moments that feel like they deserve a bit more room to breathe are quite rushed, namely Mia and Ana’s very first meeting. Mia has rushed to Alfie’s school, to assert her son’s right to defend himself — he’s bitten another child, which feels like a bit of a flat pun, given the subject matter — and Ana switches from critical school bureaucrat to close confidante in ten seconds or less. Some dialogue is played for uncomfortable laughs, when the topic at hand feels anything but funny. In one specific moment, Mia runs round and round in circles, trying to find an escape, when there’s a relatively obvious one in front of her — a door that someone else has walked in through, just moments before. Whether this is down to McIntyre or the production’s Movement Director, Ingrid Mackinnon, is difficult to say.

But there are bright spots here. Whitmore is excellent as Ana, despite her character’s somewhat unconvincing arc. Melville is fascinating to watch as she swings between clarity and madness. Truthfully, the entire cast do as much as they can with the raw tools they’ve been given. The lighting and sound design (Jack Knowles and Chris Shutt, respectively) work together quite synergistically, particularly in a very short scene during the second act that evokes a moment from a slick on-screen horror. It’s just a shame that the story as written doesn’t allow for more of these gorgeous vignettes. The set design (Tom Piper) is excellent making great use of a relatively small space, surrounded by imposing scaffolding. The claustrophobia, the grit of a city like London is keenly felt.

All in all, the potential is there. One simply wishes that Donnelly had — forgive me — sunk his teeth in a bit deeper.



APEX PREDATOR

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 31st March 2025

by Stacey Cullen

Photography by Ellie Kurttz


Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE HABITS | ★★★★★ | March 2025
EAST IS SOUTH | ★★★ | February 2025
AN INTERROGATION | ★★★★ | January 2025
KING JAMES | ★★★★ | November 2024
VISIT FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN | ★★ | July 2024
THE DIVINE MRS S | ★★★★ | March 2024
DOUBLE FEATURE | ★★★★ | February 2024
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL | ★★★★ | December 2023
ANTHROPOLOGY | ★★★★ | September 2023
STUMPED | ★★★★ | June 2023

APEX PREDATOR

APEX PREDATOR

APEX PREDATOR