Exhibition on "The Inspector General"

The exhibition “Eh, Petersburg! What a life, truly!”, dedicated to Gogol’s play “The Inspector General,” opened in the foyer of the Hermitage Theater. This is the fruit of the collective mind - several St. Petersburg archives, museums, libraries, led by the Hermitage and the Theater Museum.

Having briefly recalled that in Russia “The Inspector General” is more than a play, and that a number of its productions can comprehensively illustrate the history of theatrical styles, the organizers followed the path of free association. But, as it turned out, you still can’t escape theatrical history: sketches of costumes and scenery, props, photos of performances, posters, frock coats and dresses form the main part of the exhibition. Judging by the things posted, one hundred and fifty years of the play’s life flew by like one day. Directors realized themselves mainly through acting that could not be museumized. Of course, Mikhail Chekhov in the role of Khlestakov was not at all like Oleg Basilashvili, and not like Igor Gorbachev. But in the photo it’s very true. Everywhere you look, there is a fidgety soloist with a narrow waist, a whipped hair and eyebrows against a fat-assed corps de ballet of merchants and officials. The Russian theatrical history of "The Inspector General" looks like one production.
Three bursts of imagination are clearly visible. The first premiere of the play: here is the famous portrait, where something Mars-Napoleonic was managed to be pulled out of the author’s Khokhlyak appearance, here is Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, here is a manuscript with censorship marks. Meyerhold's performance: a photo of the mise-en-scène surrounded by materials of public debate, an extremely mustachioed card of Budyonny, who enjoyed the performance. Meyerhold's inquisitive mayor provokes a detailed commentary on the free post-revolutionary view of marriage. Here are Fyodor Raskolnikov’s disgusted complaints about the party’s fast love, Comrade Kollontai, together with Lilya Brik, dressed in a tutu.
But if attention to the 1840s and 1920s is motivated by the significance of purely theatrical events, then the third highlighted period - the 1970s - is emphasized beyond the obvious logic, but stronger than the other two. Even when the organizers decide to talk about amateur charity performances with the participation of Russian writers, next to the old posters and group portraits they place photos of the participants in the Metropol almanac. With an explanation that this is what a similar troupe would have looked like in the 1970s.
An entire showcase is generously reserved for “greyhound puppies” of the 1970s: a fawn hat, Armenian cognac, chocolates, Brazilian coffee, French perfume, a jar of caviar, scarce volumes of Pasternak and Mandelstam. References to Brezhnev's stagnation, which sharpened the satire of bureaucracy, help little: the acutely personal emotional background is obvious. You try to imagine some kind of collective character who would consolidate, explain and organize this confused collective statement. A woman of an intelligent profession - actively able to work somewhere since the 1970s and today, probably, already has a title like “Honored Worker of Culture”, a seasoned walker in Soviet offices, who has no one to share the archival intricacies of commodity exchange with (who can you screw a fawn hat on now?) , there is nowhere to throw out the excitement that has accumulated over the years, there is no one to vent to. In the freely convertible clothing set, what stuck with her most, of course, was poetry, bourgeoisly equating it with Armenian cognac and a fawn hat: not that it’s a pity to give it to secretaries, instructors, managers, but will they, pig snouts, understand?
YULIA Kommersant-YAKOVLEVA, St. Petersburg

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 62 dated April 10, 2002, p. 14

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The Hermitage adopts greyhound puppies