Inspector General

“The Inspector General”

A 25-member cast of Concordia students performed an adaptation of “The Inspector General” in Weller auditorium Oct. 26-28. Nickolai Gogol’s original play, set in a remote Russian village in the 1800s, was adapted by Dr. Mira Wiegmann so that the setting is present day Washington D.C. Wiegmann, director of drama at Concordia, rediscovered Gogol’s 1836 play after seeing an adaptation of it set in Baghdad at the last Kennedy Center American College Region V Festival.

“This caused me to reread the play and adapt it for current national political figures and events that parallel those in Gogol’s play,” said Wiegmann. “I am a daily newspaper reader and I was struck by how frequently issues in Gogol’s play matched news accounts.” In the adaptation, village officials from the original play become national office holders, and the supposed inspector comes from a remote region. The adaptation includes characters with names ending with “ski” based on contemporary political officials, modern events and cultural references. Weigmann spent several weeks last summer writing the adaptation, and held a reading with faculty and students in July to help revise the dialogue.

“It’s really neat to be able to perform something that Dr. Wiegmann put so much time and energy into in order to make it contemporary,” said Adam Hengeveld, a junior from Iowa playing the part of Khelestavkov. “The audience and actors can better relate to the ideas, making the experience more enjoyable.”

Gogol’s original play was censored by Russian government officials, and was produced only after intervention by Czar Nicholaus I.

“As with any political satire, it is important for the audience to understand the purpose of the comedy,” comments Andrew Schultz, a junior from Texas playing Cheneski, a principal actor in the cast. “It is by no means our interpretation of how we think government officials act. It's our exaggeration of and creativity with human attributes and flaws.”

Cast