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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 714 715 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. 716 717 718 719
