this week in theater

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: JULIUS CAESAR

Marc Antony (Elizabeth Marvel) bows down to Julius Caesar (Gregg Henry) in controversial Shakespeare in the Park staging (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through June 18, free, 8:00
shakespeareinthepark.org

In his October 14, 2016, opinion piece “Donald Trump is America’s Julius Caesar” for the Daily Caller, Moses Apostaticus wrote, “Every so often in history a man comes along who overthrows a corrupt elite and resets the political establishment. We live in such a time. In our time that man is Donald Trump.” Freelance writer Apostaticus came to praise Trump, not to bury him, explaining, “Trump’s similarities to Caesar are striking. . . . Like Caesar, Trump has become a lightning rod for the growing discontent of the American people.” In 1864, in a one-time-only benefit to raise funds for a statue of William Shakespeare to be placed in Central Park, the three Booth brothers staged the Bard’s 1599 tragedy, Julius Caesar. John Wilkes Booth wanted to play Brutus, but the meaty part went to Edwin; John played Marc Antony, while Junius portrayed Caius Cassius. John Wilkes Booth might not have gotten to stab the Roman leader onstage, but the following year he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre. Which brings us to Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis’s controversial Shakespeare in the Park version of Julius Caesar, which opened tonight at the Delacorte a day after Delta Airlines and Bank of America pulled their sponsorship of the beloved Public Theater summer series. Eustis has transformed Caesar into Trump: Gregg Henry, who portrayed Trump-like presidential contender Hollis Doyle on Scandal, wears a blue suit with an overlong red tie and is accompanied by his wife, Calpurnia (Tina Benko), who swats his hand away when he tries to hold it. Calpurnia looks and speaks like Melania but has Ivanka’s blond hair, while tribune Marullus (Natalie Woolams-Torres) resembles Trump aide Omarosa Manigault. This Caesar tweets from the bathtub, but his smart, strong right-hand woman, Marc Antony (Elizabeth Marvel), is no mere Kellyanne Conway in a track suit.

Brutus (Corey Stoll) and Cassius (John Douglas Thompson) conspire in Julius Caesar at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

In some ways, the play recalls Orson Welles’s 1937 Mercury Theatre production, in which Caesar was based on Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini ruling in modern-day Rome. Eustis sets his story in the Occupy world; before the show starts, the audience is invited up to the stage to add their views on the state of the country on a post-it and stick it onto a kind of anarchist wall. In the back of David Rockwell’s stage are three large depictions of the U.S. Capitol, a piece of the Constitution, and George Washington, along with two broken, movable sections of what could be a large crown or ancient architectural structure. The cast is dressed in contemporary clothing designed by Paul Tazewell. Caesar has just taunted the Roman rabble with the possibility he may accept their adulation and become emperor of Rome, leading a group of powerful senators — Marcus Brutus (Corey Stoll), Caius Cassius (John Douglas Thompson), Casca (Teagle F. Bougere), Decius Brutus (Eisa Davis), Cinna (Christopher Livingston), Metullus Cimber (Marjan Neshat), Trebonius (Motell Foster), and Ligarius (Chris Myers) — to bring him down in order to save the republic. So, about halfway through the intermissionless two-hour play, Caesar is brutally murdered, lying on his back as the killers wash their hands in a pool of his blood. It’s a horrifically difficult scene to watch, since Eustis is so clear that his Caesar represents Donald Trump. (A line of dialogue is even changed to include Fifth Ave., where Trump Tower is.) Like Kathy Griffin holding up an art piece of Trump’s bloodied head, Eustis has gone too far, past the bounds of thoughtful, provocative theater into a dangerous and extremely disconcerting realm. Staging such a blatant mock assassination of the president of the United States is completely unjustified and indefensible.

Brutus (Corey Stoll) addresses the people of Rome in Oskar Eustis adaptation of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Joan Marcus)

Brutus (Corey Stoll) addresses the people of Rome in Oskar Eustis’s adaptation of Shakespeare tragedy (photo by Joan Marcus)

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln? Well, in the first half, when Caesar is offstage, it is very good. The relationship between Brutus and Cassius is well developed by a calm, soft-spoken Stoll and a bold, dynamic Thompson. Nikki M. James is moving as Brutus’s concerned wife, Portia, and Nick Selting is engaging as Lucius, Brutus’s dedicated servant. Even the murder scene itself is splendidly choreographed, were it not for whom the victim represents. And once Caesar is dead, the play falls apart, and not only because of the Trump references. Marvel’s delivery of Marc Antony’s famous speech gets lost in a murmuring crowd that is dispersed throughout the Delacorte, Roman guards have been turned into evil, robotlike cops running rampant on protesters, and, for some reason, Brutus sleeps in an insipid yellow college dorm room. In a promotional statement before previews began on May 23, Eustis, who last directed Hamlet at the Delacorte in 2008, said, “Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means. To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” It also does not mean staging his assassination, even in the name of art.

COST OF LIVING

Ani (Katy Sullivan) and Eddie (Victor Williams) wonder if they have a future together in Cost of Living (photo by Joan Marcus 2017)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through July 16, $79
212-581-1212
costoflivingplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Martyna Majok’s Cost of Living is a tender, emotional play about four lonely people seeking connections, which in and of itself is not an unusual scenario. But what is unusual about the play, which opened last night at Manhattan Theatre Club’s City Center space, is that two of the characters have disabilities and, per the playwright’s specific instructions, must be portrayed by actors with disabilities. Despite that setup, Cost of Living is not some kind of activist production trying to make a politically correct statement about people with disabilities; instead, it’s an intimate story about two men and two women facing the daily challenges that life brings them. The play begins with a long monologue by Eddie (Victor Williams), a poetic truck driver who has lost his license because of a DUI; he has also lost his wife, Ani (Katy Sullivan), who died as a result of some kind of accident that he might have been responsible for. Now sober, Eddie is in a bar, sitting in a chair and facing the audience, as if talking directly to us. Looking back at what he used to have, he says, “That life is good for people. I was thankful for every day they ain’t invented yet the trucker-robots. That life is good. The road. Sky. The scenery. Except the loneliness. Except in the case of all the, y’know, loneliness. This was what my wife was good for. Not that this was the only thing. . . . Cuz, y’know, you married a person. And a person’s gonna be a person even if they’re married. That’s a lesson. That’s a lesson for yer LIFE right there.” It’s critical that Eddie refers to Ani as a “person” here, because when we soon see her in a flashback, she is a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair. She is a woman who is not defined by her physical situation, even though it is severe. Meanwhile, the secretive Jess (Jolly Abraham), a twenty-five-year-old bartender who has just graduated from Princeton, is interviewing for a job as caregiver to John (Gregg Mozgala), a hoity-toity Harvard man who has cerebral palsy and is also confined to a wheelchair. Jess’s main responsibilities are to help John shower and shave every morning, which turns out to be no easy task. “Why do you want this job?” John asks. “I thought, the experience and I — it’d be a very Meaningful Experience,” she replies. “Why do you want —” John starts to ask again but is cut off by Jess, who says, “The money.” “Good,” John adds, appreciative of the honesty. As the play goes back and forth between the two stories — which eventually come together in an unexpected way — subtle parallels are drawn between them, as Jess washes John as they grow closer, and Eddie washes Ani as they grow apart.

John (Gregg Mozgala) and Jess (Jolly Abraham) come to an understanding in Martyna Majok’s latest play (photo by Joan Marcus 2017)

Expanded from Majok’s short play John, Who’s Here from Cambridge, which debuted in Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Marathon of One-Act Plays in late spring 2015, Cost of Living is carefully constructed by Majok (Ironbound, Mouse in a Jar) and her “dream” director, Obie winner Jo Bonney (Father Comes Home from the Wars; By the Way, Meet Vera Stark). They avoid sentimentality or sympathy — although the drama is deeply involving — while treating all four people as equals. “Self-pity has little currency in these characters’ worlds,” Majok writes in her notes to the play. “Humor, however, has much.” Wilson Chin’s set rotates between John’s stylish apartment, the hipster bar, and Ani’s home, after she and Eddie have split. The cast is uniformly excellent — with a particularly moving performance by Williams (The King of Queens, Sneaky Pete) — as they face their unique challenges, all four making distinct connections. Majok, who was inspired by such writers as Danny Hoch, Raymond Carver, and Sarah Kane, also explores class, something that can be found in much of her work, influenced by her mother’s experience after immigrating to America from Poland when Majok was five. (Among other jobs, her mother was a caregiver for an elderly woman.) But most of all, Cost of Living is not about disabilities or about actors with disabilities; it’s not about race either, although of the two non-disabled characters, one is black and the other Latino in this production. It follows the lead of Deaf West Theatre’s 2015 revival of Spring Awakening, in which Ali Stoker, as Anna, became the first wheelchair-bound actor to ever appear on Broadway, and Sam Gold’s version of The Glass Menagerie, in which Madison Ferris, who has muscular dystrophy, portrayed Laura Wingfield, giving more opportunities to actors with disabilities, whether the role calls for it or not. The play also has one truly terrifying moment, causing the audience to gasp in unison and, most likely after the show, reconsider their initial thoughts regarding disabilities, especially during the curtain call, which features an added surprise. At one point, Ani asks Eddie, “If I weren’t like this right now, would you be here?” The reason to go to City Center to see Cost of Living is not because two of the actors are “like this right now”; it’s because it’s a well-written, well-directed, well-acted story about everyday life.

ANIMAL

Rebecca Hall is mesmerizing as a woman battling a sudden mental illness in Animal (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Stage 2
330 West 16th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $60
atlantictheater.org

Rebecca Hall gives a blistering performance as a woman struggling to deal with debilitating anxiety in Olivier Award-winning director and playwright Clare Lizzimore’s Animal, which opened last night at Atlantic’s Stage 2 theater. The intimate, emotionally involving play takes place on Obie-winning designer Rachel Hauck’s spare set, a small, horizontal space where the characters occasionally bring in a few chairs or a table, the audience of ninety-eight sitting in a handful of rows on opposite sides of the room. Hall is Rachel, a young woman who is suffering from mental illness brought on by an unnamed incident. About to visit a doctor, she asks her worried husband, Tom (Morgan Spector), “What if my thoughts change?” wondering if he will leave her. “Then good,” he responds supportively. “That’s what thoughts are supposed to do.” Rachel is seeing a psychiatrist, Stephen (Greg Heller), in the belief that she just needs the doctor to sign off on a piece of paper that will allow her to go back to work and resume a normal, healthy life. “The ultimate aim is for you to be able to stand in the middle of a storm, be buffeted on every side by the world, but remain centered,” Stephen says, explaining that there is no simple form for him to fill out and that it will take more sessions and complete honesty for her to get better. Back home, Rachel has trouble helping Tom take care of his ailing mother (Kristin Griffith), who is confined to a wheelchair. Meanwhile, a mild-mannered stranger named Dan (David Pegram) breaks into the house, titillating Rachel even as she demands him to leave. Rachel wants to pretend that she’s fine, that she’s ready to rejoin life, but deep down she knows that there is something that she is refusing to face. “I’m crying at counters, weeping into the arms of the checkout girls, not ’cause I’m sad, or depressed or — ’cause I hate myself,” she tells Stephen, whom at one point she envisions as a little girl (Fina Strazz). Rachel’s inability to separate fantasy from reality leads to a shocking, unforgettable conclusion.

Tom (Morgan Spector) and Rachel (Rebecca Hall) try to save their marriage in New York premiere of Clare Lizzimore’s Animal (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Animal is a beautifully perceptive play, as Lizzimore (The Mint, The Rage) and director Gaye Taylor Upchurch (The Last Match, The Year of Magical Thinking) wade through the morass of one woman’s severe mental illness. However, there are more than a few bumpy patches, particularly when Rachel and Tom, at opposite sides of the stage, pick up microphones and speak as if they’re suddenly absurdist confessional comics, and there are a few instances where the dialogue lapses into more of a graduate school thesis than dramatic narrative. Heller ( The Who and the What, Belleville) is excellent as Stephen, soft and gentle with the extremely fragile Rachel while not being afraid to occasionally challenge her. But the play belongs to Hall (Machinal, As You Like It), who is mesmerizing as Rachel, a woman who doesn’t understand why she has fallen apart. Throughout the eighty-five-minute play, she wears the same loose-fitting gray sweats, hoodie, and ever-present tight hat — as if she’s physically keeping her pain inside her. The revelation at the end is no mere gimmick or M. Night Shyamalan gotcha; rather, it is a surprise that one doesn’t see coming, much like mental illness itself.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE TRAVELING LADY

the traveling lady

HORTON FOOTE’S THE TRAVELING LADY
Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday, June 7 – July 30, $65-$95 ($39-$49 with code TTLRED)
212-989-2020
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Cherry Lane Theatre’s Founder’s Project and La Femme Theatre Productions are teaming up to honor celebrated playwright Horton Foote’s centennial (he actually would have turned 101 this past March; he passed away in 2009 at the age of 92) with a revival of his short-lived 1954 Broadway drama, The Traveling Lady. The show, about a wife reuniting with her husband upon his release from prison, originally featured Helen Carew and Lonny Chapman in the lead roles but such supporting actors as Jack Lord and Kim Stanley. Directed by multifaceted stage and screen legend and Obie winner Austin Pendleton, the Cherry Lane production stars Tony winner Karen Ziemba along with Larry Bull, Lynn Cohen, Angelina Fiordellisi, Jean Lichty, George Morfogen, Ron Piretti, PJ Sosko, and Jill Tanner. (Fiordellisi is the founding artistic director of Cherry Lane; Lichty and Pendleton, with Robert Dohmen, founded La Femme, which presents plays that have significant roles for women.) The set and lighting are by Harry Feiner, with costumes by Theresa Squire and sound and original music by Ryan Rumery. Foote won screenwriting Oscars for To Kill a Mockingbird and Tender Mercies and a Pulitzer for The Young Man from Atlanta but never took home a Tony despite such successes as Atlanta, Dividing the Estate, and The Trip to Bountiful.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: The Traveling Lady runs June 7 through July 30 at the Cherry Lane, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite Horton Foote play or movie to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, June 7, at 5:00 pm to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

SOJOURNERS / HER PORTMANTEAU

Abasiama Ufot (Jenny Jules) puts her hand to her heart as she brings together her two daughters, Adiagha Ufot (Chinasa Ogbuagu) and Iniabasi Ekpeyoung (Adepero Oduye), in Her Portmanteau (photo by Joan Marcus)

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 11, $69
www.nytw.org

New York Theatre Workshop’s presentation of two works from Mfoniso Udofia’s ambitious nine-part Ufot Family Inner Cycle, continuing through June 11, consists of a pair of works of surprisingly different quality, one strong and intimate, the other earnest and distant. At the beginning of the beautiful Her Portmanteau, a circular portion of the center of the stage revolves like a luggage carousel at an airport, with various items and suitcases passing by several times. Each one represents an unseen person, traveling to a destination or returning from a trip; a collection of four sharp red valises of different sizes represents a family. Thirty-six-year-old Iniabasi Ekpeyoung (Adepero Oduye) enters, looking for her suitcase, grabbing an old red one all by itself. Clearly upset, she uses a pay phone to make a call, speaking an African language. She is soon approached by thirty-year-old Adiagha Ufot (Chinasa Ogbuagu), who has come to pick her up because her mother, Abasiama Ufot (Jenny Jules), is late, having GPS problems. “My ZipCar’s parked right outside. We can . . . I’m here to take you back with me . . . to my apartment in Inwood. . . . I mean on the island . . . I don’t know how to explain. . . . My apartment in the city,” Adiagha says, unclear if Iniabasi understands what she’s saying. Instead, Iniabasi remains nearly silent and reluctantly accompanies Adiagha. She is still unsettled after going up the five flights to Adiagha’s apartment, where they are joined by Abasiama. Iniabasi eventually starts talking, but she’s not pleased with the situation. “I come here and find a woman who very suddenly, strangely has a completely different face from the pictures I have and who can’t even speak her real language. Yawping at me in English! What am I to think,” she says. Adiagha, meanwhile, declares, “We are so happy. I wish you could see my insides. Joy! . . . Joy!” It is soon revealed that Abasiama gave birth to both of the women, but by different men. While Iniabasi remained in Lagos with her father, Adiagha and Abasiama immigrated to Massachusetts.

Jenny Jules stars as Abasiama Ufot in both Sojourners and Her Portmanteau(photo by Joan Marcus)

Jenny Jules stars as Abasiama Ufot in Her Portmanteau (photo by Joan Marcus)

Over the course of 105 minutes, they tell stories about their life, both good and bad, sharing anecdotes from the old days, when they were together, including Adiagha’s visit to Nigeria as a child, filling in the details of what has happened to them during the past several decades. But it’s not all friendly; Iniabasi feels as deprived as ever, and she lets her mother and half sister know it as they try to reconnect and become a family again. Her Portmanteau features terrific performances by Jules, Ogbuagu, and Oduye, who wonderfully capture the realistic twists and turns as the characters feel one another out and search for their place in this new arrangement. Udofia (The Grove, runboybun) and director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar (These Seven Sicknesses, The Golden Dragon) are in no rush to reach any conclusions, letting things develop naturally on Jason Sherwood’s homey set, above which an angled rectangular ceiling ominously hovers, serving as a window to the outside world, a mirror of themselves, or an ever-present psychological weight.

Ukpong Ekpeyoung (Hubert Point-Du Jour) teases his pregnant wife, Abasiama Ufot (Ogbuagu), in Mfoniso Udofia’s Sojourners (photo by Joan Marcus)

Her Portmanteau is being performed in repertory with Sojourners, an Ufot family play that takes place thirty years earlier, in 1978, when Abasiama (Ogbuagu) is in Texas, eight months pregnant, in an arranged marriage to Ukpong Ekpeyoung (Hubert Point-Du Jour), her energetic, charming, but untrustworthy husband who disappears for days at a time. Ukpong is jobless and supposedly studying economics, but he spends most of his time listening to American R&B, dreaming of making a new life in the United States, while Abasiama is diligently studying biology and working the night shift in a tiny booth at a gas station, where she meets fast-talking troubled young prostitute Moxie Wilis (Lakisha Michelle May). The rotating stage also introduces us to Disciple Ufot (Chinaza Uche), a religious man who sits in front of a typewriter, exploring the causes and effects of Nigerian immigration. As Abasiama approaches her due date, the characters intertwine, accepting certain responsibilities while giving up on others. Also directed by Iskandar, Sojourners lacks the charm and immediacy of Her Portmanteau. It’s too long at more than two and a half hours, and the characters and their situations feels more standard and predictable. The narrative is also far too choppy, bouncing around from scene to scene without a smooth flow. Even the soundtrack is less interesting, with overly familiar American songs. However, despite the disappointing Sojourners, we’re very much looking forward to the next chapter in this family drama. You can see the two shows on different nights or back-to-back on weekends, in either order, as each fills in critical information about the other. In addition, NYTW has teamed with Eat Offbeat to provide between-show meals for twenty dollars, which need to be reserved in advance.

DRAMA DESK AWARDS 2017

Both Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon of The Little Foxes are nominated for Drama Desk Awards, but in different categories (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Town Hall
123 West 43rd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Sunday, June 4, $64-$325, 8:00
dramadeskawards.com
www.thetownhall.org

Tickets are still available for the sixty-second annual Drama Desk Awards, honoring the best of theater June 4 at the Town Hall. Founded in 1949, the Drama Desk (of which I am a voting member) does not differentiate between Broadway, off Broadway, and off off Broadway; all shows that meet the minimum requirements are eligible. Thus, splashy, celebrity-driven productions can find themselves nominated against experimental shows that took place in an East Village gymnasium or a military armory. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of star power at the awards presentation. Among the nominees this year are Daniel Craig (Othello), Cate Blanchett (The Present,) Amy Ryan (Love, Love, Love), David Hyde Pierce (Hello, Dolly!), Laura Linney (The Little Foxes), Kevin Kline (Present Laughter), Cynthia Nixon (The Little Foxes), Nathan Lane (The Front Page), Bobby Cannavale (The Hairy Ape), and Bette Midler (Hello, Dolly!). Up for Outstanding Musical are Anastasia, The Band’s Visit, Come from Away, Hadestown, and The Lightning Thief, while vying for Outstanding Play are If I Forget, Indecent, A Life, Oslo, and Sweat. The Outstanding Revival of a Play nominees are The Front Page, The Hairy Ape, Jitney, The Little Foxes, “Master Harold” . . . and the Boys, and Picnic, while battling it out for Outstanding Revival of a Musical are Falsettos, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweet Charity, Tick, Tick . . . BOOM!, and Hello, Dolly! The awards will be hosted again by Michael Urie (Ugly Betty, Buyer & Cellar), who is currently starring in the Red Bull Theater production of The Government Inspector, and will feature stripped-down, intimate performances from some nominated shows. Tickets start at $64 for the event; however, the $325 package, which gets you into the after-party, where you can mingle with the nominees, winners, and other stars, is sold out.

THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR

Red Bull Theater puts a wacky contemporary spin on The Government Inspector (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Red Bull Theater
The Duke on 42nd St.
229 West 42nd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 24, $80-$100
www.redbulltheater.com
dukeon42.org

Nikolai Gogol meets the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, Monty Python, and the Three Stooges in Red Bull Theater’s latest terrific farce, The Government Inspector, which opened last night at the Duke on 42nd St. “Do me a favor; send me some subject, comical or not, but an authentically Russian anecdote. My hand is itching to write a comedy,” Gogol wrote to Alexander Pushkin on October 7, 1835. “Give me a subject and I’ll knock off a comedy in five acts — I promise, funnier than hell. For God’s sake, do it. My mind and stomach are both famished.” Pushkin (Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin) provided Gogol (Taras Bulba, “The Diary of a Madman”) with an anecdote based on something than happened to him, and the result was Revizo, a wild and wacky sociopolitical slapstick parody that uncovers corruption both in a small Russian village and in humanity itself. Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation never misses an opportunity to capitalize on a bad pun or raunchy joke as the leaders of the town learn that a government inspector has arrived from Moscow, prepared to look into their nefarious doings, which are many, despite Mayor Anton Antonovich’s (Michael McGrath) declaration, “And just when things were going so well!” The opening scene, which takes place in the mayor’s study, a crowded room at the lower right of Alexis Distler’s two-story, three-compartment set, introduces the town brain trust, consisting of the bribe-happy mayor (“It’s a bribe if you eat it, it’s a bribe if you drink it, it’s a bribe if you spend an hour with it and it tells you it’s always been attracted to powerful men but has another appointment at eight!”), the school principal (David Manis), who cannot fire any of his terrible teachers (“Last month I found the poetry instructor in the lavatory with three farm girls and a goat, and I had to write him an apology because I didn’t knock”), a judge (Tom Alan Robbins) whose court is full of shit (“That’s a matter of opinion,” he tells the mayor, who responds, “I’m talking about the geese your bailiff is raising in the jury box! The place is hip high in dung”), and a hospital director (Stephen DeRosa) whose facility has no patients and a doctor (James Rana) who speaks a language no one understands. Meanwhile, the playfully effete postmaster (Arnie Burton) has a habit of opening all of the town’s mail, and not always delivering it, preferring to spread malicious gossip.

Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov (Michael Urie) and Osip (Arnie Burton) take advantage of an opportunity in Jeffrey Hatcher’s update of Nikolai Gogol (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Entering the fray are the bumbling sort-of-twins Bobchinksy (Ryan Garbayo) and Dobchinsky (Ben Mehl), Gogol’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who incorrectly identify Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov (Michael Urie) as the much-feared inspector from Saratov. Actually a low-level clerk and luckless gambler pretty boy who is trying to kill himself, Hlestakov is first seen brandishing a gun in a quaint room in the inn, on the bottom left side of the stage. “I’m sorry to leave you like this, Osip. You’re my only friend, you know that?” he says to the raggedy man (Burton) with him. Osip responds, “I’m not your friend, I’m your servant.” Hlestakov replies, “Well, you’ve behaved like a friend,” to which Osip concludes, “You’ve misunderstood the signals.” Not going through with suicide, Hlestakov instead decides, “No more drinking, no more gambling, no more the pretense that I’m better than I am. From this point forth, I shall lead a simple, honest, courageous life.” But when the mayor and his sycophants start treating him like royalty — and the mayor’s wife, Anna Andreyevna (two-time Tony nominee Mary Testa), and daughter, Marya (Talene Monahon), both show romantic interest in him — well, Hlestakov opts to let them all swoon over him, and, of course, high jinks ensue as the action moves to the top level of the stage, the elegant sitting room in the mayor’s house.

Anna Andreyevna (Mary Testa), Mayor Anton Antonovich (Michael McGrath), and Ivan Alexandreyevich Hlestakov (Michael Urie) share a toast and more in Red Bull adaptation (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Hatcher (Tuesdays with Morrie, The Turn of the Screw) and Red Bull founding artistic director Jesse Berger (Volpone, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore) keep the jokes and gags flying at warp speed over two hours (with intermission); some are repetitive or fall flat, but the vast majority hit their targets, which include health care, education, the court system, surveillance, class distinction, poverty, power, the institution of marriage, and government itself, with more than a few laughs coming at the expense of the current U.S. administration. Tony winner McGrath (Nice Work If You Can Get It, Spamalot) and Drama Desk winner Urie (Buyer & Cellar, The Temperamentals) lead the charge in Tilly Grimes’s fab costumes; the former channels Nathan Lane, with big, boisterous bloviating, while the latter, channeling Jim Carrey, is utterly charming, displaying quite a knack for physical comedy. Burton nearly steals the show as both the postmaster and Osip, who develops a direct rapport with the audience, while Mary Lou Rosato, Luis Moreno, and Kelly Hutchinson pop up in multiple smaller, wonderfully ridiculous, roles. “I became a prey to fits of melancholy which were beyond my comprehension,” Gogol once confessed. “In order to get rid of them I invented the funniest things I could think of. I invented funny characters in the funniest situations imaginable.” In today’s exhausting world, The Government Inspector is just the thing to rid us of those fits of melancholy we all experience from time to time, perhaps more often of late.