THURSDAY 5 MARCH 2020A tale of corruption and lies
Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s remake of ‘Revisor’ is dazzlingly
staged and choreographed, says Zoe Anderson
Tiffany Tregarthen dances in the satirical play (Michael Slobodian)
Sadler’s Wells, London
★★★★★
Corruption, lies and haunting beauty: Revisor is a danced comedy with a strange, lyrical heart.
Choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathon Young reinvent Nikolai Gogol’s play about mistaken
identity in dazzling layers of sound and vision.
Pite and Young’s first major collaboration was Betroffenheit, a shattering depiction of grief and addiction,
shot through with dark comedy. This time, they start with farce and push it into unnerving places. Written
in 1836, Revizor (usually translated as The Government Inspector or The Inspector General) is the story of
corrupt provincial officials. Mistaking a civil servant for an undercover inspector, they fall over themselves
to bribe him and accuse each other.