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GEORGY TOVSTONOGOV: THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR, 1973
time to pick up his method, he showed them every little trick and made them
rehearse the first episode for two weeks. Although the style of acting was
unusually physical for the Hungarian cast, it did not become biomechanical
since all actions were “smoothly built in the situations and in the psychology
of figures”.’* They helped actors elaborate their roles so carefully that reviews
referred to character building as the main virtue of the production.’
Khlestakov became deliberately weightless so that fear of him could
become more intense and comical.”* Instead of “a rascal or an astute cheater”,
spectators saw “a light- and shallow-minded young man with an ability to
adapt to all situations”.”” A penniless status seeker who had hardly even
realized he was taken for someone else and who was “also scared, in a different
way and of other things than the officials: scared of hunger, a bad run of cards,
shortcomings of social success, except for being caught”.’* The “through line”
of this medium-like upstart was based on his “not playing but becoming the
government inspector by means of the circumstances alone”.”’? Reviewers
notable actors (Gyérgy Kalman, Istvan Sztankay and Istvan Iglédi), for example, he chose
László Szacsvay for Khlestakov. As Szacsvay said in an interview, “Tovstonogov needed
my character for his conception. He wanted a skinny, insignificant lad to go with the
flow and take advantage of the situation he had got into.” Gabor Bota: Szacsvay László a
Nemzet Szinésze lett, https://nepszava.hu/1057003_szacsvay-laszlo-a-nemzet-szinesze-lett
(accessed 8 August 2016).
Koltai: Tovsztonogov és A revizor, 11.
Cf. “It is not the director’s innovations that make Tovstonogov’s staging interesting, but
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the depth of analytical thinking and character analysis.” Klyuyevskaya: Jog a haragra,
Leningradskaya Pravda, June 2, 1972. Excerpt from a review of the Leningrad production,
Színház, 6:6 (1973), 48. — “Those are wrong, who praise Tovstonogov’s richness of ideas.
He does not have ideas, he has characters, and it is a great difference. He richly works out
— and makes the participants work out — the organic stage life of all characters.” Koltai:
Tovsztonogov és A revizor, 11. — “The physical actions of the Mayor [...] are dramatically
and stimulatingly well-chosen physical actions. [...] The aides, who are also terrified, give
him the box of the hat instead of the mayor’s ornamental hat, and he quickly puts it on his
head. The box hiding the Mayor’s head is not a farcical element now. By covering his eyes and
supporting the precisely gained inner truth, it expresses the Mayor’s blindness symbolically.
When he runs into the floor standing clock the next moment and hears a metallic, scary
sound, the reverberation of the clock makes the audience feel as if he had run into Historical
Time with his head." Péter Molnár Gál: A polgármester: Kállai Ferenc, Színház, 6:6 (1973), 43.
Cf. "It is precisely the pseudo-government inspectors weightlessness that expresses the dark
humor of this process." Namely, the process of "dissecting the most ugly characteristics of
the figures by fear." Galsai: A revizor, 7.
László Szacsvay words are guoted in (f.f.): Félelem és fantasztikum, 2.
A revizor... Miklós Almásis program on Petőfi Radio.
Saád: A revizor próbáin, 6.
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