“The Government Inspector”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31115, 19 July 1966, Page 16

“The Government Inspector”

Sir, —It is possible to see in your review of the Gogol play in this morning’s issue a laudable intention, but one of the sort that Satan is said to seize for paving-blocks. Your reviewer, “D. 8. seems laudably opposed to unwarranted “hamming” by schoolboys. But this does not excuse him from labelling ‘"The Inspector" as “a thinly-disguised attack on officialdom.” The attack is, in fact, not disguised at all. And lest there be any doubt on this point, Gogol himself has furnished his piece with six good pages of instructions. His lines are to be played for laughs, eyen belly-laughs. One imagines, though this is not explicity stated, that an odd pratfall or belch will not be “irrevelant,” whatever that means, nor even “irrelevant.” The evident intention of Gogol was what the schoolboys made their own. Perhaps the scandalisation of “D. 8. was an inevitably accompaniment of the process. If so, so was the evident enjoyment of the audience, including > Yours, etc., CYNICUS. July 18, 1966;