The Inspector General - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Government Inspector, also known as The Inspector General ( or Revizor, Der Revisor in German, or Rewizor in Polish), is a a satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

play

Play (theatre)

A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

by the Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

. Originally published in 1836

1836 in literature

The year 1836 in literature involved some significant new books.-New books:*Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed *Hans Christian Andersen - The Little Mermaid...

, the play was revised for an 1842

1842 in literature

The year 1842 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Fanny Burney's diary and letters are posthumously published.*The Book of Abraham is published in two installments in the Times and Seasons....

edition. Based upon an anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...

allegedly recounted to Gogol by Pushkin, the play is a comedy of errors

Comedy of errors

A comedy of errors is a narrative work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone, in which the action usually features a series of comic instances of mistaken identity, and which typically culminates in a happy resolution of the thematic conflict.-Satire and farce:A slight variation of...

, satirizing human greed, stupidity, and the extensive political corruption

Political corruption

Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...

of Imperial Russia.

According to D. S. Mirsky

D. S. Mirsky

D.S. Mirsky is the English pen-name of Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky , often known as Prince Mirsky , a Russian political and literary historian who promoted the knowledge and translations of Russian literature in Britain and of English literature in the Soviet Union.-Life:A scion of the...

, the play "is not only supreme in character and dialogue – it is one of the few Russian plays constructed with unerring art from beginning to end. The great originality of its plan consisted in the absence of all love interest and of sympathetic characters. The latter feature was deeply resented by Gogol's enemies, and as a satire the play gained immensely from it. There is not a wrong word or intonation from beginning to end, and the comic tension is of a quality that even Gogol did not always have at his beck and call."

The dream-like scenes of the play, often mirroring each other, whirl in the endless vertigo of self-deception around the main character, Khlestakov, who personifies irresponsibility, light-mindedness, absence of measure. "He is full of meaningless movement and meaningless fermentation incarnate, on a foundation of placidly ambitious inferiority" (D.S. Mirsky). The publication of the play led to a great outcry in the reactionary press. It took the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas I

Nicholas I of Russia

Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...

to have the play staged, with Mikhail Shchepkin

Mikhail Shchepkin

Mikhail Semyonovich Shchepkin was the most famous Russian actor of the 19th century.As his father was a serf, Shchepkin's freedom had to be bought by his admirers in 1821. Three years later, he joined the Maly Theatre in Moscow, which he would dominate for the next 40 years—it became known as the...

taking the role of the Mayor.

Background

Early in his career Gogol was best known for his short stories, which gained him the admiration of the Russian literary circle, including Alexander Pushkin. After establishing a reputation, Gogol began working on several plays. His first attempt to write a satirical play about imperial bureaucracy in 1832 was abandoned out of fear of censorship

Censorship

thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

. In 1835, he sought inspiration for a new satirical play from Pushkin.
Pushkin had a storied background and was once mistaken for a government inspector in 1833. His notes alluded to an anecdote distinctly similar to what would become the basic story elements for The Government Inspector.

Plot summary

The corrupt officials of a small Russian town, headed by the Mayor, react with terror to the news that an incognito inspector (the revizor) will soon be arriving in their town to investigate them. The flurry of activity to cover up their considerable misdeeds is interrupted by the report that a suspicious person has arrived two weeks previously from Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

and is staying at the inn. That person, however, is not an inspector; it is Khlestakov, a foppish civil servant with a wild imagination.

Having learned that Khlestakov has been charging his considerable hotel bill to the Crown, the Mayor and his crooked cronies are immediately certain that this upper class twit is the dreaded inspector. For quite some time, however, Khlestakov does not even realize that he has been mistaken for someone else. Meanwhile, he enjoys the officials' terrified deference and moves in as a guest in the Mayor's house. He also demands and receives massive "loans" from the Mayor and all of his associates. He also flirts outrageously with the Mayor's wife and daughter.

Sick and tired of the Mayor's ludicrous demands for bribes, the village's Jewish and Old Believer

Old Believers

In the context of Russian Orthodox church history, the Old Believers separated after 1666 from the official Russian Orthodox Church as a protest against church reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon between 1652–66...

merchants arrive, begging Khlestakov to have him dismissed from his post. Stunned at the Mayor's rapacious corruption, Khlestakov states that he deserves to be exiled in chains to Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

. Then, however, he pockets still more "loans" from the merchants, promising to comply with their request.

Terrified that he is now undone, the Mayor pleads with Khlestakov not to have him arrested, only to learn that the latter has become engaged to his daughter. At which point Khlestakov announces that he is returning to St. Petersburg, having been persuaded by his valet

Valet

Valet and varlet are terms for male servants who serve as personal attendants to their employer.- Word origins :In the Middle Ages, the valet de chambre to a ruler was a prestigious appointment for young men...

Osip, that it is too dangerous to continue the charade any longer.

After Khlestakov and Osip depart on a coach driven by the village's fastest horses, the Mayor's friends all arrive to congratulate him. Certain that he now has the upper hand, he summons the merchants, boasting of his daughter's engagement and vowing to squeeze them for every kopeck they are worth. However, the Postmaster suddenly arrives carrying an intercepted letter which reveals Khlestakov's true identity—and his mocking opinion of them all.

The Mayor, after years of bamboozling Governors and shaking down criminals of every description, is enraged to have been thus humiliated. He screams at his cronies, stating that they, not himself, are to blame. While they continue arguing, a message arrives from the real Government Inspector, who is demanding to see the Mayor immediately.

Meyerhold's interpretation

In 1926, the expressionistic production of the comedy by Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a great Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.-Early...

"returned to this play its true surrealistic, dreamlike essence after a century of simplistically reducing it to mere photographic realism". Erast Garin

Erast Garin

Erast Pavlovich Garin was, together with Igor Ilyinsky and Sergey Martinson, one of the leading comic actors of Vsevolod Meyerhold's company and of the Soviet cinema. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1977....

interpreted Khlestakov as "an infernal, mysterious personage capable of constantly changing his appearance". Leonid Grossman recalls that Garin's Khlestakov was "a character from Hoffmann's tale, slender, clad in black with a stiff mannered gait, strange spectacles, a sinister old-fashioned tall hat, a rug and a cane, apparently tormented by some private vision".

Meyerhold wrote about the play: "What is most amazing about The Government Inspector is that although it contains all the elements of... plays written before it, although it was constructed according to various established dramatic premises, there can be no doubt — at least for me — that far from being the culmination of a tradition, it is the start of a new one. Although Gogol employs a number of familiar devices in the play, we suddenly realize that his treatment of them is new... The question arises of the nature of Gogol's comedy, which I would venture to describe as not so much 'comedy of the absurd' but rather as 'comedy of the absurd situation.'"

In the finale of Meyerhold's production, the actors were replaced with dolls, a device that Andrei Bely

Andrei Bely

Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.-Biography:...

compared to the stroke "of the double Cretan ax that chops off heads," but a stroke entirely justified in this case since "the archaic, coarse grotesque

Grotesque

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...

is more subtle than subtle."

Other adaptations

Fyodor Dostoyevsky played the postmaster Shpekin in a charity performance with proceeds going to the Society for Aid to Needy Writers and Scholars in April 1860.

The first film based on the play was actually made in German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, by Gustaf Gründgens

Gustaf Gründgens

Gustaf Gründgens , born Gustav Heinrich Arnold Gründgens, was one of Germany's most famous and influential actors of the 20th century, intendant and artistic director of theatres in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Hamburg...

in 1932; the German title was Eine Stadt steht Kopf, or A City Stands on Its Head. In 1933, the Czech actor Vlasta Burian stands for the inspector in the film Revizor by Martin Frič.

In 1949, a Hollywood musical comedy version

The Inspector General (film)

The Inspector General is a 1949 musical comedy film. It stars Danny Kaye and was directed by Henry Koster. The film also stars Walter Slezak, Gene Lockhart, Barbara Bates, Elsa Lanchester, Alan Hale Sr. and Rhys Williams. Original music by Sylvia Fine and Johnny Green.-Premise:The film is loosely...

was released, starring Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...

. The film bears only passing resemblance to the original play. Kaye's version sets the story in Napoleon's empire, instead of Russia, and the main character presented to be the ersatz inspector general is not a haughty young government bureaucrat, but a down-and-out illiterate, run out of a gypsy's travelling medicine show for not being greedy and deceptive enough. This effectively destroys much of the foundation of Gogol's work by changing the relationship between the false inspector general and members of the town's upper class.

The 1955 Indonesian film "Tamu Agung" (The Exalted Guest), directed by Usmar Ismail

Usmar Ismail

Usmar Ismail was a prominent Indonesian film director. He was a Minangkabau descent. He was widely regarded as the native Indonesian pioneer of the Cinema of Indonesia although films made by the Dutch dated back to around 1926....

, is a loose adaptation of Gogol's play. The story is set in a small village in the island of Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

, shortly after the nation's independence. While not strictly a musical like its Hollywood counterpart, there are several musical numbers in the film.

In 1958 the British comedian Tony Hancock

Tony Hancock

Anthony John "Tony" Hancock was an English actor and comedian.-Early life and career:Hancock was born in Southam Road, Hall Green, Birmingham, England, but from the age of three was brought up in Bournemouth, where his father, John Hancock, who ran the Railway Hotel in...

appeared as Khlestakov in a live BBC Television version (which survives), one of his few performances outside situation comedy.

In , in 1962 Luigi Zampa

Luigi Zampa

Luigi Zampa was an Italian film-maker.- Biography :Son of a worker, Zampa studied film making from 1932 to 1937 at the Italian film school Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome....

directed the film Anni ruggenti (starring Nino Manfredi

Nino Manfredi

Nino Manfredi was an Italian actor, one of the most prominent in the commedia all'italiana genre....

), a free adaptation of the play, in which the story is transposed to a small town of South Italy, during the years of Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

.

An episode of Fawlty Towers has similar story line about Mistaken identity when a guest shows up at the hotel and is thought by Basil Fawlty to be a hotel inspector but who in fact is a con artist who borrows money from the hapless Basil, then disappears, and at the end of the episode the man they were expecting shows up.

In México, in 1974 Alfonso Arau directed and co-wrote an adaptation in film called Calzonzin Inspector, using the political cartoonist/writer Rius

Rius

Eduardo del Río is a famous Mexican intellectual, political cartoonist and writer born in Zamora, Michoacán....

's characters.

The play was filmed in the Soviet Union and Russia by Leonid Gaidai

Leonid Gaidai

Leonid Iovich Gaidai was one of the most popular Soviet comedy directors, enjoying immense popularity and broad public recognition in the former USSR & modern Russia...

under the title Incognito from Petersburg (1977) and as Revizor (1996) with Nikita Mikhalkov

Nikita Mikhalkov

Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union.Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the distinguished, artistic Mikhalkov family. His great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a Galitzine princess...

playing the Mayor. Neither adaptation was deemed a critical or box-office success.

In the Netherlands, a movie version was released in 1982, De Boezemvriend (The Bosomfriend) starring André van Duin

André van Duin

André van Duin is a Dutch actor , singer, writer and program creator.-Television, radio and theatre:...

. This was a musical comedy, in which an initerant dentist in the French-occupied Netherlands is taken for a French tax inspector.

The 1981 Taiwanese/Hong Kong move "If I Were For Real" is an adaptation of the Government Inspector set in the Cultural Revolution.

In 1992, Tony-winning Broadway director Daniel Sullivan collaborated with the Seattle Repertory Company to write the Gogol-inspired "Inspecting Carol", which the Western Washington Center for the Arts described as "A Christmas Carol meets Noises Off meets Waiting for Guffman. A man auditioning at a small theatre is mistaken for an informer for the National Endowment for the Arts. As the cast and crew cater to his every whim, they also turn the traditional tale of A Christmas Carol on its head."

The PBS

Public Broadcasting Service

The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

series Wishbone
Wishbone (TV series)
Wishbone is a television show which aired from 1995 to 1998 and reruns from 1998 to 2001 in the United States featuring a Jack Russell Terrier of the same name. The main character, the talking dog Wishbone, lives with his owner Joe Talbot in the fictional modern town of Oakdale, Texas...

adapted the story for an episode.

In 2005, playwright David Farr

David Farr (theatre director)

David Farr is a writer, theatrical director and Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.-Background:Farr was brought up in Surrey and educated in Guildford and the University of Cambridge .- Career :...

wrote and directed a "freely adapted" version for London's National Theatre

Royal National Theatre

The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

called The UN Inspector, which transposed the action to a modern-day ex-Soviet republic.

In 2006, Greene Shoots Theatre

Greene Shoots Theatre

The Greene Shoots Theatre is a theatre company formed in 2002 from past and final year students from Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire. It takes its name from Graham Greene, a former pupil of the school and novelist, playwright, screenwriter, travel writer and critic. specialise in performing...

http://www.greeneshootstheatre.co.uk performed an ensemble-style adaptation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Directed by Steph Gunary (née Kirton), the acting used physical theatre, mime, and chorus work that underpinned the physical comedy. The application of Commedia dell'arte-style characterisation both heightened the grotesque and sharpened the satire.

In 2007, the integrated group of the Nottingham Youth Theatre presented a comedy version, in which there were modern songs, and the setting was Snottinggrad, a fictional Russian town. The show was revived for one night in May 2008.

In 2008, Jeffrey Hatcher

Jeffrey Hatcher

Jeffrey Hatcher is a playwright and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty...

adapted the play for a summer run at the Guthrie Theater

Guthrie Theater

The Guthrie Theater is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the result of the desire of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Oliver Rea, and Peter Zeisler to create a resident acting company that would produce and perform the classics in...

in Minneapolis. A slightly revised version of that adaptation plays at Milwaukee Repertory Theater

Milwaukee Repertory Theater

Milwaukee Repertory Theater, founded by Mary Widrig John in 1954, as the Fred Miller Theatre Company, is now located on the east bank of the Milwaukee River in the Patty and Jay Baker Theater Complex at 108 E Wells St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is home to an eleven member Resident Acting Company...

in September 2009. St. Charles Preparatory School in Columbus, Ohio also staged a slightly revised version of Hatcher's adaptation in February 2010.

In its 2009/2010 season, the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama will present a new "modern" adaptation of The Government Inspector by Dr. Michael Chemers and directed by Jed Allen Harris.

In 2010, Vivid Theatre Company performed a new adaptation of the play by Andrew Berriman and Colleen Campbell which toured the North East of England.

In 2011, London's Young Vic Theatre presents a new version adapted by David Harrower

David Harrower

David Harrower is a Scottish playwright who lives in Glasgow.His agents are Casarotto Ramsay.-Career:...

, directed by Richard Jones

Richard Jones

-Artists and entertainers:* F. Richard Jones , American filmmaker* Dick Clair , born Richard Jones, American producer, actor and TV writer* Richard Jones , British bass guitarist...

, starring The Mighty Boosh

The Mighty Boosh

The Mighty Boosh is a British comedy troupe featuring comedians Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Developed from three stage shows and a six episode radio series, it has since spawned a total of twenty television episodes for BBC Three and two live tours of the UK, as well as two live shows in the...

's Julian Barratt

Julian Barratt

Julian Barratt is an English comedian, musician, music producer and actor. Barratt is best known for playing the character of Howard Moon in the cult comedy The Mighty Boosh, which he also co-writes with comedy partner, Noel Fielding.-The Mighty Boosh:Barratt stars as the character Howard Moon...

and Smack the Pony

Smack the Pony

Smack the Pony is a British sketch comedy show that ran from 1999 until 2003 on Channel 4. Its title was intended to sound like a euphemism for female masturbation; the working title was Spot the Pony. The main performers and writers on the show were Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips...

's Doon Mackichan

Doon Mackichan

Doon Mackichan is an English comedienne and actress.-Biography:Born in London, Mackichan was brought up in Surrey until the age of 9 when she moved with her family to Upper Largo, Fife. She is a graduate of Manchester University...

and Kyle Soller

Kyle Soller

Kyle Soller is an American actor currently living in England following his training at RADA in London.. Having done various plays following his graduation in 2008, his breakthrough year came in 2011 where he starred in The Glass Menagerie at the Young Vic, The Government Inspector also at the...

.

In 2011 the Stockholm City Theatre

Stockholm City Theatre

Stockholm City Theatre is Sweden's most popular theatre stage. It was created in 1956 but the first performance was delayed until 1960. It had not yet been decided at that point where in the city the theatre would lie so the Folkets hus building at Norra Bantorget, with a temporary stage, became...

performed the play in an adaption set in the Soviet 1930:s

Great Purge

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...

Operatic versions

Karel Weis

Karel Weis was a Czech composer and folksong collector. He was born in Prague.-Biography:...

(s) (1862–1944): Der Revisor, 1907; probably an operetta.

Eugene (Jeno) Zádor (1894–1977): His The Inspector General was originally performed 1928; revised version first performed on 11 June 1971 by the Westcoast Opera Company at El Camino College

El Camino College

El Camino College is a two-year public community college located partially in the unincorporated area of Alondra Park and partially in the City of Torrance in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is commonly referred to as "Elco" or "ECC"...

in Los Angeles.

Amilcare Zanella (1873–1949): His Il Revisore premiered in Trieste on 20 February 1940.

Werner Egk

Werner Egk

Werner Egk , born Werner Joseph Mayer, was a German composer.-Early career:He was born in the Swabian town of Auchsesheim, today part of Donauwörth, Germany. His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved to Augsburg when Egk was six. He studied at a Benedictine Gymnasium and entered the municipal...

(1901–1983): His Der Revisor was first performed at the Schlosstheater Schwetzingen

Schlosstheater Schwetzingen

Schlosstheater Schwetzingen is a theater in Schwetzingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The historic building, opened in 1753, is part of the Schwetzingen Castle and since 1952 the principal venue of the Schwetzingen Festival. It is also called Hoftheater , Hofoper , and Comoedienhaus...

at the Schwetzingen Festival

Schwetzingen Festival

The Schwetzingen Festival is an early summer festival of opera and other classical music presented each year from May to early June in Schwetzingen, Germany....

in 1957.

Krešimir Fribec (1908–1996): His Dolazi revisor was completed in 1965.

Giselher Klebe

Giselher Klebe

Giselher Wolfgang Klebe was a German composer. He composed more than 140 works, among them 14 operas, 8 symphonies, 15 solo concerts, chamber music, piano works, and sacred music.-Biography:...

(1925–2009): Chlestakows Wiederkehr
Chlestakows Wiederkehr
Chlestakows Wiederkehr, op.149, is an opera in three acts by Giselher Klebe. He also wrote the libretto, based on the play Der Revisor by Nikolai Gogol. The work lasts about 70 minutes....

was first performed at the Landestheater Detmold
Detmold
Detmold is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with a population of about 74,000. It was the capital of the small Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918 and then of the Free State of Lippe until 1947...

in 2008.

Also: Incidental Music by Mikhail Gnesin (1882–1957).

The play has been translated into all European languages and remains popular, inasmuch as it deals with the hypocrisies of everyday life along with the corruption perpetrated by the rich and privileged. In the Netherlands, for instance, André van Duin

André van Duin

André van Duin is a Dutch actor , singer, writer and program creator.-Television, radio and theatre:...

made his own Dutch version of the play called De Boezemvriend (meaning "bosom friend", "best buddy"); the 1982-filmed movie is set in the Netherlands during the Napoleonic era with Van Duin playing tooth-extractor Pas du Pain (which actually translates as "Breadless" rather than "Painless").

In Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

, P. L. Deshpande adapted this play as Ammaldar (literally "the Government Inspector") in the late 1950s, skillfully cladding it with all indigenous politico-cultural robe of Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, while maintaining the comic satire of the original.

External links

Text of the play in Russian English translation by Thomas Seltzer
Thomas Seltzer (translator)
Thomas Seltzer was a Russian-American translator, editor and book publisher.-Life:...
Soviet 1952 cinema version, watchable online and downloadable with Esperanto subtitles