Word: gogol
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...Nikolai Gogol...
...Nikolai Gogol had a mind like a trap door. Anyone venturing on the deceptive surfaces of his works must be prepared to lose his footing at unexpected moments and be sent plummeting into radical alterations of consciousness. Realism shifts to fantasy; the prosaic turns mystical; solid citizens stumble unwittingly into topsy-turvy land...
...Onstage, Gogol's characters look naturalistic enough, even transparently accessible, but it is the unseen company they keep-God, the devil and Russia-that lends them the strange dimensions of figures in fables. At one point in Marriage, a key character breaks into a paroxysm of laughter about the absurdity of just about everything. Then his face takes on an ashen look of desolation, and he says, "God have mercy on our sinning souls." Gogol uses such juxtapositions to go beyond tragedy or comedy into a realm that might be called cosmic farce...
...Gogol produced the play in 1842, and the plot has been a staple in many lands: the comic trials and tribulations of marriage brokers and their clients. Fiokla (Barbara Bryne) is an accomplished matchmaker, but she has something of a problem bride-to-be in Agafya (Cara Duff-MacCormick). Agafya is a mer chant's daughter and a bit of a ninny. The three suitors Fiokla lines up are chauvinist piglets. Ivan Pavlovich Poach'tegg (Jon Cranney) is a blustery, pompous bureaucrat. Poach'tegg (sometimes translated Omelet) is only after Agafya's property, a two-story...
...Gogol promised Pushkin, who gave him the idea for the plot, that his play would be "funnier than hell." It is fair to assume that Gogol meant the stress to fall equally on the first and last words. Greatly gifted though he is, Rumanian Director Liviu Ciulei has ignored the balance and projected the work as knockabout farce with an infusion of German impressionism. The result is that the characters become animated puppets and imbecilic caricatures of venality. They are robbed of the quality of vulnerable humanity that lies at the heart of the play, the play wright...