STAGE REVIEW : Set Mars a Fine ‘Inspector’

There’s a story that when Meyerhold brought his famous production of “The Inspector General” to Paris in 1929, a displeased traditionalist yelled: “Give us Gogol!”

That wouldn’t be a fair comment on Stein Winge’s production at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. It does give us Gogol--as Winge sees him. And it has some fine comic performances, particularly from Ron Campbell as an “official from Petersburg” who fleeces a small town without uttering a single lie.

The show does have a problem: Pavel Dobrusky’s set. To stress the nightmarish tone of Gogol’s comedy, the play is acted in front of, and sometimes from the depths of, an enormous quilt. In the second act, the bedstead becomes a circus tent, with its rigging and nets. In each act, the floor assumes a variety of angles and is padded with wrestling mats.

No problem, conceptually. BecauseMarianna Elliot’s costumes keep us in the vulgar world of the play, there’s no reason why the set can’t develop an argument of its own. And it’s fun to see this one drape itself for the next scene, sometimes as if preparing to swallow it, like the man-eating plant in “The Little Shop of Horrors.”

But the set presents certain practical difficulties to the actors. They have to be careful not to get really tangled up in the rigging during the bribe scene. They can’t quite trust the floor. To a degree, the set functions as an obstacle course, and if this heightens the sense of a nightmare from which the characters are struggling to awaken, it impedes the all-stops-out quality that “The Inspector General” ought to have in performance, as the best of all tank-town comedies.

Granted, Gogol’s play is more than a gallery of village idiots, but it starts with that, and Winge’s company has each of the idiots dead to rights, particularly the village elders--Anthony Geary’s terrified schoolmaster; Kedric Robin Wolfe’s self-righteous judge; Barry Michlin’s pusillanimous director of charities, and others.

Nothing could be funnier than that first scene, with Mayor Philip Baker Hall stealthily announcing that a government inspector has slipped into town, and his dim advisers trying to process this information and to come up with a coherent response to it. Oh, dear. Is this bad news, and how does it affect my department?

It has been so long since they’ve had to take action about anything that they welcome any conversational sidetrack, and for a time we might be watching the proceedings of the Lake Wobegon village council.

But while we’re laughing at Michlin’s cheerful plan to reduce the population of the charity hospital by letting nature take its course, we also take Gogol’s point that there’s something monstrous about these “respected citizens.” One can see why the play, like “Tartuffe,” didn’t set well with certain people in the audience when it was first performed in 1836.

Alas--partly because of the set, partly because his actors can’t get mad at their characters--Winge’s production doesn’t quicken or deepen as the characters’ monster-ness comes to the fore. Hall’s habit of falling into a fit when things go wrong gets a little tiresome, and Camilla Carr’s portrait of his awful wife seems overly strained, particularly the idea of playing her as overtly randy, rather than covertly so.

But we never tire of Campbell as the “visitor from Petersburg.” What’s funniest about his performance is the young man’s attitude. He’s not at all surprised that the village takes him for a very important person. The surprise was that Petersburg didn’t see him that way. He may wow them on his return, with this success behind him. How delightful when society confirms one’s private opinion of oneself!

When Campbell bats his eyes at the elders, and the rubles come out of their wallets, this “Inspector General” is Gogol, without strain. Elsewhere, there’s a tendency for the show to bog down. It’s hard to run an exciting race on a muddy track.

Plays Tuesdays-Sundays at 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2. Closes Aug. 28. Tickets $22-$25. 514 S. Spring St; (213) 627-5599. ‘THE INSPECTOR GENERAL’

Nikolai Gogol’s play, at the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Director Stein Winge. With Philip Baker Hall, Kedric Robin Wolfe, Barry Michlin, Anthony Geary, Anthony Torn, Vito D’Ambrosio, Allan Wasserman, Shabaka, Alec Franco, Valente Rodriguez, Camilla Carr, Maureen Kelly, Jill Holden, Larry Hankin, Ron Campbell, Courtney Walsh, David Cranton, Delbert P, Highlands, Wendy Rhodes. Assistant directors Barry Michlin, Jose Luis Valenzuela. Producer Diana White. Lighting and sets Pavel Dobrusky. Assistant set and lighting designer Douglas Smith. Costumes Marianna Elliot. Assistant costume designer Christine Hover. Sound design Jon Gottlieb. Stage manager Frank Merino.