The Government Inspector

A theatrical mirage. A psychological bluff. A lie becomes reality when everyone around is too ready to believe it.

The action takes place today, in a modern city threaded with surveillance cameras. It seems impossible to hide anything here: everyone is watched, everything is recorded, anything can appear on a screen.

Yet the more we can see around us, the harder it becomes to see the truth.

Here Khlestakov is not a harmless empty talker who accidentally wanders into someone else’s game. He is vivid, explosive, temperamental and dangerously charming - a gifted liar whose main weapon is imagination. He instantly senses other people’s fears and desires and begins to build a new reality around himself. His lies grow bolder, more aggressive and more seductive until they gradually take over an entire city.

But is Khlestakov really deceiving these people? Or do they themselves want to be deceived?

The officials see in him the person they fear. Others see someone who might open a path to power, status, money or another life. Each person completes their own image of the “inspector” - and eventually becomes a victim of their own imagination.

At the centre of the production is an exploration of self-deception, the fear of exposure and the remarkable human ability to believe a convenient lie even when the truth is directly in front of us.

Gogol wrote “The Government Inspector” almost two hundred years ago. The world has changed, technology has changed, and the ways in which we watch one another have changed. But people are still capable of seeing not the truth, but precisely what they want - or are afraid - to believe.

Directed by Sergey Golomazov: theatre director, teacher and professor, a graduate of the GITIS directing faculty. Artistic director of Moscow’s Malaya Bronnaya Theatre from 2007 to 2019, and of the Riga Russian Theatre named after Mikhail Chekhov from 2018 to 2026.

Cast: Artur Smolyaninov, Kirill Safonov, Yulia Aug, Shamil Khamatov, Igor Chernyavskiy, Marat Efendiev, Varvara Chekhs, Tatiana Zachest.

Performed in Russian, with subtitles on request. Age rating: 14+.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes plus a 20-minute interval.