Tag Archives: Miltos Yerolemou

Review – The Government Inspector, Festival Theatre, Chichester, 10th May 2025

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Back in those boring Covid pandemic days, I realised that I’d never read any Gogol, and decided that was a situation that needed rectifying. So I downloaded his short stories onto my Kindle for free, and spent many a happy hour laughing my head off at his hilarious, thoroughly rude observations, pricking the pomposity of the pretentious, and noting how, two hundred years on, his truths live on and nothing much has changed.

I’d seen a production of his The Government Inspector in 2011, and although it was something of a critical success, I wasn’t overly impressed. It was a sloppy show that went for cheap laughs and camped it up over the top, even though it thought itself to be a true smartypants of a production. Surely, Chichester, with a new version directed by Gregory Doran, will do a slicker job of it. I assumed.

This production has gone – largely – for a traditional approach, with a truly 1830s setting, costumes and music. The opening scene shows much promise, with all the officials of the town in a panic because a government inspector is in their midst and they all fear he will root out their corruption, bribe taking and inefficiency, thereby ruining their lovely lives. In true Gogol style, no time is wasted getting to the heart of the play, and it’s performed with urgency and commitment. Good start.

However, then everything just grinds to a complete halt. Whilst the audience is now ready to see this government inspector for themselves, Gogol instead introduces us to the mayor’s wife and daughter, bickering petulantly and tediously about nothing much. And the pace that had been built up in the first scene instantly collapses. It’s not a very funny conversation and it doesn’t get many laughs. By the time the scene is over and we go on to the inn where the Inspector (it isn’t the inspector by the way – it’s a joke of mistaken identity) and his man are staying with no intention of paying for their board and lodging, it’s amazing how little we care about any of them. As the play progresses, we realise how completely unlikeable every character in the story is, and no amount of pomposity-pricking is going to do anything to improve it.

The staging doesn’t help; the opening scene ranges widely over the huge Festival Theatre stage, using every inch available; but the second scene is very static and just takes place on two chairs at the front, and the third scene is crammed into a tiny part of the stage, which literally prevents its characters from breathing. You feel you want to somehow release them from their confinement.

A fool and his money are soon parted, goes the saying, and that is at the heart of the play. Each town officer does his best to bribe Khlestakov, the (non-) inspector, and as that wretch realises what is going on, his requests for money get bigger and bigger. At the end, the entire town has made an idiot of itself, and our anti-hero has sped off, cash in hand, looking for some other sad saps to dupe. It’s a very credible cautionary tale. But this production is most definitely not the sum of its parts. Too much shouting, inadequate use of the stage, some roles bizarrely underplayed whilst others are overplayed, it feels very unbalanced. There’s not enough light and shade, and despite their best efforts you never really get an understanding of the peril that the townspeople face. Individual rounds of applause are reserved for the three musicians who pop up during scene changes, and for an amusing but hardly original design trick of having a little carriage dart all around the stage, depicting the escape of the villainous clerk Khlestakov and his servant Osip. I saw that done in On The Twentieth Century in 1978 – it was mildly amusing then and it’s mildly amusing now.

True to Gogol, the play ends with a final tableau for what feels like at least a minute, daring individual audience members to start the final applause, whilst most of us just sit uncertain and uncomfortable at what we’re seeing. Whilst I admire this faithfulness to the original text, it does put the audience through an ocean of odd reactions and emotions, and you just want to look away!

There are some successful performances – Lloyd Hutchinson is good as the Mayor, a fiery mass of anxiety and overconfidence, and Miltos Yerolemou and Paul Rider work together excellently as Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, the two minor officials who are almost two parts of the same body. Nick Haverson gives the best performance of all as Osip, the servant, ruthlessly and viciously putting his own interests first, no matter what his master wants.

Sylvestra le Touzel and Laurie Ogden play the mother and daughter looking and sounding like Mrs Slocombe and Liz Truss, which is an alarming visual prospect; for me, their performances never felt credible or, sadly, entertaining. Tom Rosenthal’s Khlestakov is a competent performance but neither larger than life enough to convince us of his importance, nor measly enough to convey truthfully that he is a smalltown clerk.

I’ve never seen a Saturday night Festival theatre audience so empty, and I’m afraid it was even emptier after the interval. The comedy gets lost in the franticness, and this production simply doesn’t work.

 

Two Disappointing For More!

Review – Young Marx, Bridge Theatre, 19th November 2017

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First of all, a great big stagey welcome to the Bridge Theatre, a new venture on the south side of the Thames, a few minutes from Tower Bridge, opposite the Tower of London, along from HMS Belfast. I don’t think there’s any other theatre with such a selection of iconic views from its front door. Inside, there’s a wide bar/reception area that leads to the circle and galleries, and stairs down to the stalls. Inside it’s very comfortable, with a great rake and terrific sightlines, as the rows are slightly staggered so that you don’t have someone else’s big head right in your line of vision. Our interval glass of Minervois was exceptionally tasty; my only criticism is that the box office was closed at the end of the show, even though it’s an extension of the bar area, where people were still working. There were at least four people, maybe more (including myself) who hung around waiting for someone to come so that we could buy a copy of the playscript (and after all, it’s not until after the show that you really know whether you want to buy a copy or not) – but alas no one appeared. That was at least £40 worth of sales they missed out on. Still, what a great theatre!

Its inaugural production is Young Marx, from the pen of Richard Bean (who seems to be unstoppable with his writing at the moment) in collaboration with Clive Coleman. Yes, even that towering, intimidating, bewhiskered old commie Karl Marx was once a young roister-doister. Penniless and thoroughly amoral, he steals from his wife to get money from the pawnbrokers, sleeps with the maid and then passes her child off as someone else’s, hides from his creditors, and from the law; even causes a fight in the library. He’s an appalling procrastinator; his pal Engels begs him to knuckle down and write his Magnum Opus that will change the lives of working people for ever more; but he’d sooner go out and get drunk. The play lets us into his chaotic life; his relationship with his wife (not good); with Engels (very good); and with his children (extremely good). It emerges that there is a spy in the midst of their political gatherings, but who is it?

To be honest, we don’t particularly care, as the play is much more character-driven than plot-driven, and all the better for it, I feel. Mark Thompson’s gloomy revolving set provides a strong evocation of the poverty-stricken streets of London, and the Marx’s spartan apartment; and contrasts with Grant Olding’s rock-style incidental music, which deliberately clashes anachronistically with the 19th century story, startling and unsettling the audience with its constant interruptions. Messrs Bean and Coleman provide Marx with a couple of farcical fight and flight scenes, just to create a larger than life sense and to distance the story from reality a little bit more – even though almost everything that takes place in the play did actually happen for real. It must be said, that first fight scene was clumsy and ineffective; Mrs Chrisparkle feared she was going to be in for a very tedious afternoon. But she needn’t have worried. Everything else afterwards worked well; and the second fight scene, in the library, is simply hilarious and superbly executed.

Rory Kinnear is perfect casting as Marx. He has that knowing air; that look that weighs up the difference between the sensible and the mischievous but will always go for the mischievous, just because he can. Switching effortlessly between faux-sincerity and childish naughtiness, he manages to keep one step ahead of the law but not necessarily ahead of his wife. He has brilliant comic timing; his scenes with the excellent Laura Elphinstone as Nym, where he’s having to cover up his infidelities, are a joy. Oliver Chris’ Engels is another superb performance, bright, polite and cheery, full of decency to compare with his pal’s lack of it. Nancy Carroll, whom we last saw as the delightfully naughty Maggie in Woyzeck, gives a great portrayal of his long-suffering wife Jenny, dispensing kindness to all and sundry apart from her wretched husband. Tony Jayawardena, hilarious as Mr Bhamra in Bend it Like Beckham, again shows his fantastic ability to get the best humour from throwaway lines as Doc Schmidt. If you think the receptionists at your GP can be occasionally indiscreet when blurting out your symptoms to a full waiting room, just be grateful you don’t have Schmidt treating your venereal disease.

I also really enjoyed the performance of Eben Figueiredo as the servile and over-enthusiastic Konrad Schramm. Mr Figueiredo was one of the few good things about Chichester’s Pitcairn a few years ago, so it’s good to see him in a show worth his talent! And the always entertaining Miltos Yerolemou is on top form as the grumpy French revolutionary, Emmanuel Barthelemy, with his constant translation issues. In the performance we saw, Marx’s children, Qui Qui and Fawksey, were played by Matilda Shapland and Logan Clark and a jolly fine job they did of it too. But the entire cast works extremely well together as a very fluid and entertaining ensemble.

The whole thing is played for laughs from the start to the finish. Serious students of political ideology need not apply. But if you like to see Marx hiding from his enemies in a cupboard or on the roof, or witness Marx and Engels nick a gate from a park and then pee up a wall together like naughty schoolboys, you’re on to a winner. It runs at the Bridge Theatre until 31st December. Good fun, highly entertaining – and a lovely new theatre to explore!

Review – Travels with my Aunt, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 13th May

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One look at the programme reveals its cast of four men, so where’s the aunt? Well this cast play over 25 characters of all sexes, races and nationalities, and the sense of fun this generates makes this a terrific production of Giles Havergal’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel.

All four actors are dressed as the staid nephew Henry to the enigmatic Aunt Augusta, and all play that role from time to time – frequently at the same time, which is a neat trick. But then one becomes the aunt, another the aunt’s “friend”, another a girl on the train, another a CIA agent – ah yes, we’ve already duplicated. It’s very lively and entertaining, keeps you on your mental feet as an audience, and tells its rather intriguing and exciting tale at a splendid pace.

It’s also very inventively designed. You’re greeted by a stage full of suitcases of all sizes, and quickly you realise that many of the suitcase facades are doors to a variety of outside worlds. No wonder the theatre called on the good people of Northampton to surrender their unused suitcases.

The cast are all great, but I particularly liked Miltos Yerolemou, great in the RSC’s recent Twelfth Night, whose character of Wordsworth was a long way from the Lake District, and James Duke who most astonishingly flitted from being the staidest Henry to the untrustable CIA agent in the blink of an eye. I hope this production gets seen elsewhere as it’s a huge effort to go to for just 2 and a half weeks in Northampton. (Not that we’re not grateful, keep up the good work!!)