The second day’s play of the ‘The Hindu Theatre Fest’, The Government Inspector staged at Ravindra Bharati on August 22, evoked wonderful response from the audience. Akash Ayyagari wins a ‘Couple Meal’ from Marigold Hotel for his review.
Shame-pain and Chakkar
Shakespeare remarked that ‘all the world’s a stage’. My takeaway from The Government Inspector is that all the stage’s a play, and this play surely benefited from it.
What should have been a simple farce focusing on small time corruption involving sleazy individuals in a nondescript place turns out to be a comedy on the dynamics of the interplay between the character, the actor and the audience.
It took me a little while to understand that more walls were broken in this performance than the customary fourth wall. The actors routinely shattered the first three walls (if they may be called so) as the distinction between the characters on stage and the actors backstage began to blur.
For instance, the bard also plays the role of a cop and, in a magnificent piece of miscalculation, comes on once to recite his lines, but as a postman! The mayor (and kudos to this brilliant actor), in his soliloquy on the faux inspector, suddenly incorporates his dislike/jealousy of the actor playing the inspector in a scene that was a marvel of timing. This ends with him actually interacting with the jeering audience in a very believable manner. Bravo!
I don’t know if the Tehzeeb of theatre is timing, but the comic timing in this play was spot on, so much so that no jokes, whatever their standard, were allowed to fall flat. Add to this the physical element that was hilarious to watch and you’ve got a winner on your hands.
All the players, including Nawab, the Schoolmistress, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Postmaster, Appalam and Chappalam, along with their alter egos, were exceptional.
In the end, I was left wiping tears of mirth from my eyes and wishing for two additional pairs of eyes, so that I could have tracked everything and everyone on stage at the same time. How difficult it must be to be in character for every moment in a 100 minute play! Fantastic.
Akash Ayyagari
Failed to impress
Today’s play The government inspector was an average affair which failed to impress the audience. Although meant for a mature audience it was executed in a very immature manner. A messy script, badly directed, seemed no better than a play enacted by a group of school children in a hurry. There were moments of good acting by some actors who played the role of mayor, servant, postman and policeman and the two brothers — Apallam and Chapallam.
Ravi Meenu
Something missing?
A complicated play, professionally enacted, with nary a cue missed by any actor, following closely the original plot scripted by Gogol, of the foibles of ordinary but corrupt men and women, still quaking with fear of the Government Authority… the story as it unravels fills you with an unsavoury sense of ‘Is something missing?’
Dubbed as a comic tribute to everything experienced in the past 15 years, the play steadfastly refuses to live up to the expectations aroused by this so-called ‘Comedy of Errors’ and its classic heritage. The laughs come few and far between, and one finds oneself, dejectedly, reduced to laughing only at the clichéd, jaded ‘Robert-Mona darling’ jokes.
Mohendra Kumar Srivastava
Energetic comedy
“He’s not the Government Inspector?!” Mayor Choudhary and the team made my evening yesterday! Not just my evening, but one of the most hilarious evenings of my life. It was pure talent on stage with the actors switching multiple characters in a jiffy, the best part being you got to witness the backstage happenings in the front stage! Now that is new. A bit distracting at first, but when the side stage started to blend into the main act, the levels of hilarity skyrocketed.
The director stood to his promise of a 100 minutes of energetic comedy and madcap satire. The colours of the costumes, the lightness in the atmosphere, the music, combined with impressive performances, made The Government Inspector a filling watch.
Three cheers for Akvarious Productions! Thanks to THTF! And kudos to the guy who played Choudhary. Loved him the best!
Priyanka N
Delightfully different
Quirky, whacky, irreverent! If you think that’s about what sums up the play you are mistaken. Nikolai Gogol’s early 19th century Russian play adapts quite comfortably to present day Indian settings.... a point to prove that corruption is universal and has no language or regional barriers. Moffusil settings with greedy and corrupt officials are presented using satire, innuendo and even slapstick comedy. The comic timing of the actors especially Aplam & Chaplam is great!
Showing the chaotic behind the curtain scenes (along with the prompter) may have been something new but it wasn’t a great idea. It only added to the confusion as there were a host of characters with some of them performing more than one role. The irreverence too went over the top in some places, one felt. But all in all it was delightfully different and entertaining!
Sunita Reddy
The unravelling ensemble
Akvarious Productions’ rendition of Gogol’s The Government Inspector was an entertaining meta-play about contemporary media practices. The different actors — from tele-serial heartthrob, “serious” film starlet, child actors, Youtube sensations, et al — are practising/performing Gogol’s comedy of errors with slippery fourth walls and incidental comments on theatre techniques, practices and personalities. It capitalises on intertextual references from popular culture like Bollywood, Disney, comic books, and exaggerated colour-coded characters to create a boisterous, anglicised and highly-entertaining tamasha. However, these same things which works for the play is also its failure. There is very little of Gogol, his dark humour and his questioning of the political system in this superficial interpretation. Any scope of comment on the contemporary political systems is missed out in the furious ad-libbing and improvisation that sustains the comic affect at the expense of details. What we are left with is a watered-down political satire that fails to rise beyond an enjoyable spoof.
Olympia Bhatt
It had the portential, but…
One would think that a play that which starts with a man in boxers introducing the different actors in the play by signing a jingle would go on to be extremely hilarious. But Akvarious’ The government inspector can at best be described as a play with irregular spasms of funny lines followed by humourless antics of the motley group of actors on stage.
This adaptation of the 1836 play written by Nikolai Gogol’s classic is a play within a play format. Themes like corruption and fidelity were dealt in a humorous way that had a refreshing commonplace tone to it. The characters were quite well defined and the actors did a fine job with the timing of the jokes. Despite there being amazing lines like “what’s so great about Romeo and Juliette?
It’s a copy of Qayamat se Qayamat tak after all”, and with great characters like the judge who only accepts pups as bribes, this play felt overstretched. Towards the end, when one of the characters laments, “let’s just end the play”, most of the audience couldn’t hope but nod along. If a quarter of the play’s running time, especially towards the end, was scissored, then this play would have had the potential of being a winsome comedy.
Ravi Teja Sangeetha
