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Liked It “This is an awesome play. A comedy of the first class. |
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“This is an awesome play. A comedy of the first class.
Punxsutawney Paul wrote this review Saturday, September 26 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
I read a translation by Joshua Cooper in an small anthology of Russian plays published by Penguin. This is the stand out title. The premise is just so perfect for a play, the result being that it works perfectly. It's right up there with The Importance Of Being Earnest, or Pygmalion.
So the scene is a small provincial town in Russia. There's nothing remarkable about the place. The bureaucrats are lazy, incompetent and corrupt. Just like everywhere else. Then rumours circulate that a government inspector is going to visit the town incognito. There's a panic as the bureaucrats rush to hide their excesses and cover up the worst atrocities.
Meanwhile a penniless dandy turns up in the local hotel. There's a case of mistaken identity and the townspeople assume he must be the secret government inspector. Hilarity ensues.
But the whole play is just so much better than mere hilarity. It's really a scathing inditement against the petty corruption endemic throughout the entire political system, from the Tsar on down. And it's a genuinely Russian play. It doesn't read like a mainstream European play, it doesn't share the same stock characters and situations. This play is a revelation. Short. But very entertaining.”
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