Performance

Following the six weeks of rehearsals in Rehearsal Room 1 at the National, the company had to make the always difficult transition to the Olivier auditorium. The Olivier makes particular demands on actors, they have to be heard and seen of course, but at the same time they must try to preserve the truthfulness of their work, and to act subtly in an auditorium seating over a thousand people is difficult.

The UN Inspector began its run of preview performances with a running time of just over three hours (including a 20-minute interval). By the time the play opened to the press, that running time had been cut by a full half hour. As a result the pace of the story-telling was accelerated but some of the detailed work developed during rehearsals (including parts of the performances of some of the actors) was sacrificed.

In the scene in the hotel room (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four) we witness the first meeting of two almost equally terrified men – the President, and Martin Gammon. It seems at first absurd that the President fails to see Gammon for what he is – a nobody – but the writing and Kenneth Cranham’s acting of the part of the President reveal that his judgement is fatally clouded by his rabid paranoia, fed by the knowledge of his own complicity in the gross and on-going corruption practised in his country.

Martin Sheen, who plays the failed estate agent, stressed that in the performance the actors had to transmit the emotional intensity of the situation whilst at the same time making it seem real. His side-kick Sammy, played by Nicolas Tennant, also stressed the need to ensure that the performance is grounded in reality because that is what makes it funny.