The Government Inspector

Sergei Golomazov's new "The Government Inspector" is a play-trap, a psychological bluff about how lies become reality when those around you are ready to believe them.

The action takes place today, in a modern city literally crisscrossed by surveillance cameras. It seems that nothing here can be hidden: everyone is watched, everything is recorded, and anything can turn against you.

But the more is visible, the harder it turns out to be to see the truth.

Khlestakov here is not an innocent chatterbox who has accidentally stumbled into someone else's game. He is vivid, explosive, temperamental, and dangerously charming liar. His main weapon is imagination.

He instantly senses other people's fears and desires and begins to create a new reality around himself. His lies become ever more brazen, aggressive, and seductive - until they gradually take over the whole city.

But is Khlestakov really deceiving these people?

Or do they themselves want to be deceived?

The officials see in him the one they fear. Others see a person who could open the way to power and a higher status. Each one imagines their own "inspector" - and in the end becomes a victim of their own fears.

At the center of the play is an exploration of the mechanisms of self-deception, the fear of being exposed, and a person's astonishing ability to believe convenient lies even when the truth is right before their eyes.

Gogol wrote "The Government Inspector" nearly two hundred years ago.

Since then, the world, technology, and the ways we watch one another have changed.

But a person still can see not the truth, but exactly what they want or fear to believe.

Cast

Arturs Smoļjaņinovs

Kirill Safonov

Yulia Auga

Shamil Khamatov

Igor Chernyavsky

Marat Efendiev

Varvara Chekhsa

Tatyana Zacheshta

Director - Sergei Golomazov