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GEORGY TOVSTONOGOV: THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR, 1973
“the corrupt officials’ vision obscured by utmost fear”,®° a weirdly impersonal
figure embodied the strange and the visionary in Tovstonogov’s mise-en¬
scene, clad in black from tip to toe. He was threatening the Mayor as “the
inevitable fate, an attendant of his crimes, an embodiment of his remorse,
an erratic authority greater than him”, until he finally entered on stage as
the real government inspector. Appearing unexpectedly at Khlestakov’s place
or in a jolting buggy high on stage, this “phantom”? became visible when
the lights went out on other characters for a while, “as if the ghost of the
government inspector in his dark carriage had arrived not at a small town but
straight into the Mayor’s mind”. This game of substitution showed exactly
who the aldermen really saw: a nightmarish figure in place of the weightless
Khlestakov.‘” Sudden changes and transformations had thrust the play into
infernal circles and presented the plot as “a dance macabre of conscience”.°”
The mise-en-scéne had two layers:°*° the ridiculous as well as the terrific
communist terror, the ongoing forced evictions from Budapest!] Like in Tovstonogov’s
production, the mayor had not turned to the laughing audience in the final act, saying ‘What
are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves.’, but he had told these words to his birds
of a feather. As Lukacs writes of this scene, ‘Satire is no longer directed against the audience,
it is the clear farewell of the liberated people to the terrible past’.” (Mihälyi: Tovsztonogov—
Latinovits, 776.) Furthermore, [3] “even Endre Gellért had not backed down from the more
powerful effects of humor” (ibid.), from what Lukäcs had called “the cruelty of the real,
progressive, revolutionary writer”, the “poetic expression of social commitment”, stating
that “the true masters of the comical had always been warriors, inexorable, unforgiving
warriors against what they had seen as obsolete, rotten, guilty in their own society.” (Lukacs:
Gogoly: A revizor. 5.) [4] According to Gabor Mihályi, "we find the cruel vision demanded by
Lukacs in Tovstonogov’s conception. As in Philistines, he does not allow any identification or
sensitive feelings towards the figures of the comedy. He laughs at them viciously and cruelly.
At the end of the production, the microphone conveys a loud laugh, which then hiccups into
a cry. [In Imre Sinkovits’s voice, the phrase ‘don’t curse the mirror when your face is crooked’
sounds from the speakers with a wild laugh turning to unstoppable sobbing.] Lukäcs quotes
Pushkin in his review, who was laughing heartily during a reading of Dead Souls and then
said to Gogol, ‘How sad was our Russia.’ [...] Tovstonogov’s conception conveys this laughter
of Pushkin.” (Mihälyi: Tovsztonogov-Latinovits, 776.)
No author: À revizor, 2.
László Bernáth: A revizor. A Nemzeti Színház színpadán, Esti Hírlap, Vol. 18, No. 61, 13'*
March, 1973, 2.
Tovstonogov’s expression, used in the interview published in Népszabadsdg on 6" August,
1972.
Pongrác Galsai: A revizor. (Egy remekmű remeklő rendezése), Budapest 21:3 (1973), 6.
At the moments of fear, this dark figure “literally hid the real Khlestakov" from the Mayor
and the officials” (Bernath: A revizor, 2.), so “reality got overcome by a nightmare” (Ungvari:
Theaterbrief, 11.). “Doors were opening as unexpectedly and eerily creaking as in horror
films." (Mihályi: Tovsztonogov-Latinovits, 777.) “The mixture of reality and nightmare
worked on stage as accurately as a clock.” Major: Tanultam, 7.
Letay: A polgärmester, 13. — Cf. also “Gogol bites his mouth with blood here. Khlestakov is
extremely scared too. And the audience sits in frozen silence.” Galsai: A revizor, 6.
“The one is a satirical comedy made up of traditional elements, the other is a bitter, sometimes
terrifying atmosphere that stops us laughing. The surface is the quirky, sometimes puppet¬
like leaping, chasing, confusing and mocking, but behind it, fear is sensible from time to
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