Word: inspector
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Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General is a funny and inventive play. It includes all sorts of comic devices, from the broadest of slapstick to sly, finely-timed lines. The Harvard Dramatic Club production, which opened the Loeb season last night, adds a few more touches; lavish make-up (especially emphasizing Gogol's nose fixation) and underlings with Brooklyn accents. The result is an often hilarious evening, which suffers only occasionally from tedious repetition of obvious jokes...
...plot is thin, to say the least. The mayor of a provincial town and his partners in municipal mismanagement (Massachusetts pols could learn something from these guys) get word that an inspector general is coming, I suppose, to inspect the town. The mayor is worried and orders a general overhaul ("the more mess there is, the more it looks like municipal activity...
...officials then mistake a bankrupt dandy passing through town for the inspector. The young man, played by Schmidt, manages to make off with a good deal of cash and the mayor's daughter's virtue before he is discovered...
...even this contrivance can be overlooked; Miss Rutherford's uproarious detecting saves all. She early flings her gauntlet to the official investigator, Inspector Craddock, (When he refuses to admit that old Enderby may have been done in, Miss Marple swings her cloak 'round her shoulder like a Caesar crossed and announces imperiously, "I shall have to investigate this myself!") and does not retrieve it until the last bit of evidence--symbolized by the plaster of paris mold she carries in her pocket--has fallen into place...
...bomber attacking Najran inside Saudi Arabia nearly scored a direct hit on a U.N. platoon. Getting into the act, the Russians have sent in at least 900 workmen and technicians, who are constructing a new jet airport north of San'a. Recently, the Russians threw an inquiring U.N. inspector off the premises when he approached the airport to conduct a routine inspection. Apart from such harassment, the U.N. teams found it downright dangerous to travel around the country...