By Nikolai Gogol in a new version by David Harrower, Young Vic

ACTOR of the week was Simon Muller, who was about to open in the Young Vic’s Government
Inspector when he had a fall and hurt his leg.

Undeterred, Mr Muller whistled up a pair of crutches and performed Wednesday’s final
preview with his sticks.

That it worked is perhaps because this production is so surreal. Mr Muller’s fellow
actors even managed to work in some crutch-related jokes.

Director Richard Jones and adaptor David Harrower throw an operatic wildness at Nikolai
Gogol’s 19th century comedy.

The audience enters the auditorium via the set, passing two characters playing cards
and another peeling potatoes. Good touch.

We are in provincial Russia – ‘a small town in the fold of a map’ – and the mayor
(Julian Barratt) is a corrupt oaf. He learns that an undercover government inspector
has arrived from St Petersburg. Yikes!

A mystery visitor is duly identified in the local inn. He soon finds himself being
feted and bribed.

In this whacky, clever take on the tale, the word ‘incognito’ buzzes round the stage
in stencilled lights, pestering the mayor. The set angles are like something viewed
through distorting mirrors. The colours are crazy pinks and yellows.

Mr Barratt, best known as one half of comedy duo The Mighty Boosh, does not exactly act.

He loiters, uttering his lines while darting his eyes from side to side. His air of
alienation gives the satire a blunt, disembodied quality.

The presumed inspector is played with elan by Kyle Soller, a dashing lad with a mad
mop of ginger curls. I suspect we will see a lot more of him.

A madcap cast of village characters prostrate themselves and wave banknotes in the
inspector’s face.

Hobbling Mr Muller plays a twitchy schoolmaster. Amanda Lawrence is terrific as a
moustachoied postmaster (she looks like Field Marshal Montgomery). Steven Beard is
a splendidly pervy German doctor.

The humour is as heavy as the heat in the auditorium. Perhaps that is why I found
myself drifting late in the first half. The cartoon style kills any topical allusions
to modern Britain. It might benefit from some of that.

But as the wit becomes increasingly savage, portraying the rottenness of the mayor’s
regime, the show acquires a momentum that is hard to resist.

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