Theater review: A funny 'Government Inspector'

Laugh your heads (and lower parts) off.

When Sally Wingert first appears onstage as the mayor's wife in "The Government Inspector," her gaudy, kitschy costume by Ann Hould-Ward seems like a character itself in this comedy drawn in bright carnival colors.

"Why are you dressed like a lamp in a whorehouse?" The mayor, played by a throaty Peter Michael Goetz, asks. To make us laugh until our sides hurt, that's why.

With "Inspector," which opened Friday, Guthrie Theater director Joe Dowling has delivered a comedy of galumphing, harrumphing hilarity. One part farce, one part slapstick, with a dash of musical theater, this naughty, frothy play is wholly entertaining.

While the plucky cast executes the jokes with gusto, much of the humor in this laugh-a-minute ride comes out in Jeffrey Hatcher's clever, fearless script.

Hatcher has not transposed this Gogol classic from 1836 rural Russia to 21st-century America, per se. But all of his characters feel contemporary in a show where official ignorance and incompetence are compounded by corruption and hubris.

We recognize The School Principal (Raye Birk as a smiling gnome), for example, as he bellyaches about teacher contracts and tenure. The postmaster (deadpan Jim Lichtscheidl) sometimes misplaces the mail for long periods, or may not deliver it at all. But he's diligent in reading all of it. We've also seen this small-town mayor, his tacky wife, and his petulant daughter (Maggie Chestovich).

Nearly all members of the community are on the take. When they get word that there's a government inspector in town, they mistake Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov, a puffed-up fellow who has run out of money at a fleabag inn, for the incognito official. They lavish Hlestakov (Hunter Foster as a feckless narcissist) with bribes. He lives the life of Riley.

There are so many things right with "Inspector," the old joke about going to the theater to nap does not apply. Dowling has framed every line for maximum comic effect and this cast, with its expert knack for timing, delivers. I particularly enjoyed Foster, whose accents went from formal to southern. (In the context of the show, anything is possible.) And the Nelson brothers, Kris and Lee Mark, were hysterical as Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, the Humpty-Dumpty doppelganger land-owner twins.

In some ways, this staging, way out here in 21st-century Minneapolis, offers a kind of redemption for Goetz, who played the same role in Michael Langham's New York staging in 1994.

In looking for something good to say about that production, which starred Tony Randall, New York Times critic Vincent Canby could only applaud the stagehands ("bravo, stagehands," he wrote).

At the Guthrie, I laughed so hard, I stopped taking notes.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390