{"id":13739,"date":"2017-03-15T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T16:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=13739"},"modified":"2017-03-13T15:30:47","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T22:30:47","slug":"the-inspector-mixes-modern-day-victoria-and-19th-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/03\/15\/the-inspector-mixes-modern-day-victoria-and-19th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inspector<\/em> mixes modern-day Victoria and 19th-century Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

It would be hard to imagine Victoria\u2019s bicycle-lane drama in a play developed in 19th-century Russia, but UVic\u2019s Phoenix Theatre plans to make it happen. The Inspector<\/i>, based on Nickolay Gogol\u2019s The Government Inspector<\/i>, has been adapted to modern-day Victoria; director Linda Hardy, a fan of Gogol, spent five months transforming the script to include all the main issues surrounding our city. While the play deals with corruption, issues such as bike lanes and what Hardy refers to as \u201cthe poop in the bay\u201d are also at centre stage. Hardy says that the show couldn\u2019t have come at a better time, given the current political climate.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Inspector<\/em> looks at current issues, both globally and locally, through a unique perspective (photo by David Lowes).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI was thinking about how it\u2019s our [the Phoenix Theatre\u2019s] 50th anniversary and looking at what\u2019s happening in the world, both in our country and, of course, immediately to the south of us,\u201d she says, \u201cand I thought that a political satire was just the ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardy says that it\u2019s great to do something very contemporary, as it\u2019s important for students to know what\u2019s going on around them. Engaging in the silly side of the script is what makes a satire like this work, says Hardy, who even received a bit of help from the adaptation\u2019s muse.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe City of Victoria has been so generous,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019ve loaned us a couple of their light posts, and our carpenter has been able to build wonderful bases for them, so they practically float.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local issues aside, Hardy says what makes The Government Inspector<\/i> work even today is that it touches on a fundamental part of human nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Gogol wrote this\u2014it was the middle of the 19th century\u2014he had a line which said, \u2018Well, you have to lie a little these days. After all, you couldn\u2019t hold a good dinner conversation if you didn\u2019t tell a lie.\u2019 Well, I shifted that to, \u2018Well, everybody lies these days; it\u2019s become a social and political necessity.\u2019 So here we have the incoming president of the United States, who\u2019s a pathological liar,\u201d she says. \u201cSo once lying has been made something that is permissible, and we\u2019re all doing it, isn\u2019t it something we need to have a poke of fun at?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardy says that satire itself is a wonderful tool when looking at our own behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, when Moli\u00e8re was writing\u2014and remember, he was writing under Louis XIV\u2014it couldn\u2019t have been a stronger totalitarian regime, right? He was poking fun at the behaviour of certain establishments that, quite frankly, needed to have somebody poke a bit of fun at them because they were downright dangerous. And because he did it with humour, he got away with it. So as we look at what\u2019s going on politically and socially, nationally and internationally, it\u2019s become a heyday for comedians. Because if we don\u2019t laugh, we\u2019ll cry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Inspector
\n<\/i>Thursday, March 9
\nto Saturday, March 18
\nVarious prices,
\nRobert Bishop Theatre, UVic
\nfinearts.uvic.ca\/theatre\/phoenix<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It would be hard to imagine Victoria\u2019s bicycle-lane drama in a play developed in 19th-century Russia, but UVic\u2019s Phoenix Theatre plans to make it happen. The Inspector, based on Nickolay Gogol\u2019s The Government Inspector, has been adapted to modern-day Victoria; director Linda Hardy, a fan of Gogol, spent five months transforming the script to include […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-issuemarch-1-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13739"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13801,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13739\/revisions\/13801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}