The Government Inspector

Abbey Theatre, Dublin Until Jan 28 7.30pm (Sat mat 2.30pm) €13-€40 01-8787222 abbeytheatre.ie

Early in his dependably eccentric book on Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov despairs of the few English- language translations he has encountered that leave Gogol seeming “dry and flat and always unbearably demure”. With an unelaborated flourish, the author concludes: “None but an Irishman should ever try tackling Gogol.”

Really? How would Nabokov have fared with a Northern Irish woman's take on The Government Inspector in Marie Jones 1993 adaptation? And if 1931's An Cleamhnas Clistewasn't a dry, flat or remotely demure version of Gogol's play Marriage, would Nabokov know the difference?

Roddy Doyle’s new take for the Abbey on Gogol’s famous political satire ought to again test the hypothesis, letting us see how an Irish sensibility infuses Gogol’s belief in art’s social obligation – and his deep distaste of hypocrisy – with bite and fluency.

When it comes to “Making a Point”, though, recent Abbey productions have rendered Irish references – from Anglo Irish Bank shout-outs to blurted property fixations – pointlessly blunt. Gogol’s send-up of Tsarist Russia was archly performed for the Tsar himself, but advance examples from Doyle’s version poke expected fun at a thoroughly well-understood and hopefully elapsed culture of “brown envelopes” and politicians’ “principal residences”.

Here’s hoping a deeper kinship is found in translation. Otherwise, Vlad, careful what you wish for

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