By Bill Marx

The Russian dramatist’s mordant vista of ridicule, his picture of human society as an endless chain of fools fooling fools fooling fools, couldn’t be more fitting — it is a snow globe of our times.

The Inspector by Nikolai Gogol. Based on the translation by Thomas Seltzer. Newly adapted and directed by Yura Kordonsky. Staged by Yale Repertory Theatre at 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven, through March 29.

Chinna Palmer, Brandon E. Burton, and Elizabeth Stahlmann in the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of The Inspector. Photo: Joan Marcus

An inept administration, dedicated to accumulating profit and undermining democracy, run via a combination of arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence by crooks, cheaters, dunderheads, sycophants, wannabe oligarchs, and hapless ideological lackeys. It is impossible not to cry in frustration at the spectacle of America’s deconstruction. That may explain why (too) many current theater productions, a lineup of musicals and comedies, are eager to take our minds off of the tragic wreckage wrought by Trump, Elon Musk, and their slice-and-dice tech-bro minions. But Yale Rep’s wildly amusing, occasionally inspired production of Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 masterful satire, freely adapted by director Yura Kordonsky, suggests that there is another way to go — produce a farce that laughs at the duplicity of human nature without letting us (the audience) off the hook. The Russian dramatist’s picture of society as an endless chain of fools fooling fools fooling fools — his mordant vista of ridicule — couldn’t be more fitting. It is a snow globe of our times.

The setup is simple. A 19th-century Russian village in the middle of nowhere is run by a cadre of conspiratorial small-time criminals, from the Mayor down to the Director of Public Health, the Postmaster, the School Superintendent, the Judge, and a Doctor who may not be a physician and can’t speak a word of Russian. Rumors spread that the authorities in St. Petersburg may have sent an inspector, undercover, to ferret out wrongdoing. Who knows — the snoop might already be in town? A pair of nitwitted members of the middle class overhear a young man, Khlestakov, at the inn, talking in a way that makes them suspicious — they report back to the powers-that-be, and panic ensues.

The truth is that Khlestakov is nothing but an impoverished and unprincipled clerk, a habitual liar who can’t afford his bill at the inn, or even pay for a meal, because he has lost all of his money gambling. Presto, the fortunes of the starving grifter are reversed; he is visited by the Mayor and his accomplices, who are only too happy to shower him with meals, bribes, and compliments; they boast about themselves and their accomplishments as they rat out each other and other townspeople. Khlestakov turns out to be a skillful grifter, a merciless parasite who vacuums up offerings as he boasts of his political connections and literary celebrity (he says he wrote Faust and is good pals with Pushkin). He also makes advances on the Mayor’s wife and daughter before he skips town, a rich man. Then the Mayor and his fellow toadies hear an announcement — the real inspector has arrived and demands their presence.

Chinna Palmer and Samuel Douglas in Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of The Inspector. Photo: Joan Marcus

The relevance of this lesson in collective inanity is clear, from the conniving fantasist at the center of the comedy to the corrupt indifference of a village administration more interested in pocketing money for themselves than budgeting social services. For example, Gogol’s Director of Public Heath could be at the C.D.C. today, offering advice about how to combat bird flu: “Oh, as to treatment, Doctor and I have worked out our own system. Our rule is: the closer to nature the better. We use no expensive medicines. People are a simple affair. If they die, they die anyway. If they get well, they get well anyway.” There’s a timorous School Superintendent who can’t control the bunk his addled teachers pump into their students and a poetry-loving Postmaster who is open to spying on the missives of all and sundry. (If only the village was big enough to have a Banker — Gogol would no doubt have anticipated the con of crypto.)

Khlestakov and the others are creatures of appetite, frantic for food, luxury goods, and promotions. As I recall, the set for Peter Sellars’s 1980 production of The Inspector General for the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge was overcrowded with things, including a giant pineapple. Kordonsky and designer Silin Chen go in the opposite direction (except for a huge chandelier), but it is just as impressive. The cavernous set is mostly monochromatic; there’s a couple of street lamps holding a clothesline above the audience’s head, a giant window, pieces of furniture, and a floor covered in poly-fil snow. The space is needed for the interludes of physical comedy, some of it inspired, such as a terrifically zany battle to unite Khlestakov’s wayward shoe with his foot. Early on, Gogol gives the Mayor a threatening dream; it is a creepy nightmare about rodents that Kordonsky stages with actors wearing colorful puppet heads. In his frisky adaptation, the director supplies some of his own surreal fodder, such as Khlestakov’s psychotic fantasy of (bureaucratic?) facelessness and the Mayor’s daughter’s sugary delusion of romance.

Samuel Douglas, Brandon E. Burton, Malik James, and Grayson Richmond in Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of The Inspector. Photo: Joan Marcus

The interpolated dream sequences underline the anxieties and illusions of the play’s lowlifes. That is all well and good, but the key to staging this comic masterpiece is in giving each characterization plenty of imaginative behavioral detailing. Gogol’s figures are delineated by their individual crotchets, their idiosyncratic ways of communicating — or not communicating. Kordonsky, an associate professor at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama, has cast the Yale Rep production with actors who are either current students or alums of the school. The performers dish up a platter of caricatures who are nothing if not animated, sometimes too much so. On occasion, Samuel Douglas’s Khlestakov careens into the berserk — how could someone that hungry have so much energy and nonstop lung power? The deadpan of Nomè SiDone, in the role of the clerk’s servant, Osip, serves as a refreshing contrast. But, as the production moves along, Douglas grows more disciplined and funnier (particularly as a double-booked seducer).

I saw the show on opening night and my hunch is that once the cast members settle down and lower the decibel level (louder does not mean funnier) in the clamorous first half, their exuberant spirits will embellish the lampooning rather than blaze out of control. As it is, there are some scenes of zesty hilarity. My list of standouts in the cast would include Brandon E. Burton and Elizabeth Stahlmann as the Mayor and his wife, Anna, and Annelise Lawson as the Postmaster.

Amid all the furious slapstick, Gogol’s essential message is effectively delivered by the Mayor in a famous tear-down of the fourth wall: we are all members, whether we like it or not, of this village of damned fools. Regarding the horrific clowns who are in charge at the moment, may they quickly become victims of what theater scholar Albert Bermel called the first rule of farce: “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

Bill Marx is the editor-in-chief of The Arts Fuse. For over four decades, he has written about arts and culture for print, broadcast, and online. He has regularly reviewed theater for National Public Radio Station WBUR and The Boston Globe. He created and edited WBUR Online Arts, a cultural webzine that in 2004 won an Online Journalism Award for Specialty Journalism. In 2007 he created The Arts Fuse, an online magazine dedicated to covering arts and culture in Boston and throughout New England.