The Inspector General

The most famous play by the great Russian novelist, storyteller and dramatist, N. V. Gogol, has been one of the constants of the world's stages since its inaugurating performance in the St. Petersburg Theatre in 1836. The longevity and the universality of the play and the need for it to be re-read on the stage are probably just the consequence of the immortality of the themes and motifs ''The Inspector General'' deals with and which it successfully reports. Because, moral corruption, twisted social values, hypocrisy and weakness of character are eternal. Gogol himselfs talks about the idea of the play in his ''Author's confession'': ''I wanted to pile up in ''The Inspector General'' all the evil I knew in Russia at the time, all the injustice that is done in those places and those occasions when the most righteousness is required from man and, at the same time, I wanted to mock everything.'' Precisely the latter verb (and its application as a dramatic procedure) is the source of the play's generic feature, the feature which undoubtedly helped it to be gladly performed and seen.

''In a story of mistaken identity that shows the true nature of people, in the first place greed, then lack of morals, dishonesty, infidelity and everything else that starts with a negative prefix, the dramatis personae aren't caricatures, but faithful representations of their corruption. Because, if a caricature means pointing out the details, disharmony or unusualness, Gogol's characters, as interrpreted by Gavella's ensemble are really not caricatures. Perhaps they are grotesque, even a little disgusting, but they are real, created down to the last detail and the viewer's problem why he or she doesn't like them is because these characters are too reminiscent of the faces they see in the mirror.

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Dolenčić is still the best when it comes to miniatures... One of those is the performance of the so-called city-artist played by Ozren Grabarić, who is up and ready to sing sweet melodies by Stanko Juzbašić every moment when the mayor needs a musical break or the artistic confirmation of his power.'' (Igor Ružić, Radio 101)

''Starring in male roles Slavica Knežević, Bojana Gregorić, Barbara Nola, Marina Nemet and Jelena Miholjević have very vividly and playfully formed the core of the performance everyone else had to follow. Antonija Stanišić and Vlasta Knezović had to hypertrophy, with their individual scenes, ''the womanhood'' in this production that takes off the everyday masks from both men and women.

Dražen Kühn and Filip Šovagović have skilfully took over the roles of the two deceivers and Janko Rakoš has amazingly found the key for the role which seems like it came out of a silent movie. We will remember Ozren Grabarić by his hillarious role of the city-artist, and the credit for this excellent intervention goes to the dramaturge Ana Tonković Dolenčić, who also made this production concise and gave it fluidity. She and the director successfully blended the realist, avant-garde Harms poetics, staging a story from the perspective of their own generation. The theatre is meant to be a place where the actor rules and that ''is not performed for the audience,but in front of it.'' Parica Martinović gave perhaps the deepest moving performance and Ranko Zidarić successfully found a way to transfer his natural wit on to the stage and give ''The Inspector General'' an extra plus.'' (Želimir Ciglar, ''Večernji List'')