The Inspector General of Gogol 'on stage at the Bellini Theater in Naples

At the Bellini Theater in Naples a reinterpretation of the "Inspector General" of Gogol 'is staged, between comic and grotesque atmospheres

It will be on stage at Bellini Theater of Naples, from the 3 7 2014 December, The Inspector General, the famous play written in 1836 by the Russian playwright Nikolai Vasil'evič Gogol '. It is a satirical comedy that targets the corrupt bureaucracy of Tsarist Russia through a gallery of profiteers, corrupt figures and businessmen represented in the most grotesque and exaggerated way possible.

The story is based on a misunderstanding. In a small Russian town comes the news of the arrival of an inspector general from St. Petersburg, sent as an auditor. But to be mistaken for the plainclothes inspector is a penniless youngster who will not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity to benefit, as a true cheater, from a society that has based its foundations on cheating and falsehood.

Directing the show Damiano Michieletto, who also oversaw the dramaturgical adaptation. For Micheletto, the key to entering the drama is the phrase “Look at these banknotes, they are all dirty!”, Said by the inspector general when everyone is trying to give him money to bribe him.

This joke was a clue to open my imagination about Gogol's characters. Who can have greasy banknotes?…. People who maybe a little dirty are… they probably don't wash a lot. In fact, the characters are often described through their smells: they stink of cabbage, tobacco, and vodka… It is a story that stinks of alcohol and drunk people. Alcohol almost becomes a concept that persists in the five acts: used to calm fear, to communicate one's manhood, to celebrate and revel, to drown one's depression.

The reality projected onto the scene is that which emerges from Gogol's text, that of a society in which “There are no rules, there are no laws, violence is around the corner, often disguised as good nature. A petty and dirty humanity, compressed in fear for four acts and ready to explode at the end in a cathartic liberation, told as an aspiration to luxury, to easy fun, to an elsewhere perhaps even more narrow and mean than their reality ".

Michieletto chooses to dress all the elements with irony - from the scenes, to the costumes, to the music - putting them at the service of the representation of the inner world of the characters, narrow and dishonest. A third-rate bar is the setting for a story with an engaging rhythm, in constant balance between comedy and grotesque, which drags the viewer into a reality governed by the arrogance and meanness of the undergrowth of power. A reality that is halfway between the tsarist Russia of the nineteenth century and our tragicomic present.