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Walkabout show will stand up to inspection

The Government Inspector, Theatre Royal

Royal Centre education manager David Longford wants to make this theatre more accessible. He goes about it the right way as we arrive to see Gogol's swipe at corrupt and bunker-bound bureaucracies.
We are greeted by the players parading in the dress circle bar in their 19th-century frock-coats and bonnets. Talk to them nicely and they will tell you which parts they are playing and what you can expect to see.
This is an auspicious debut for The Royal Company, a community ensemble created by Longford and directed by him in this frill-free translation.
They don't make the stage this season – the new boards are being polished this week – but in a promenade performance they make the most of what's left to them, like the foyer and two bars. The actors chivvy us along to the next scene while the band tootles Prokofiev.
We even go outside to watch the mayor (an over-promoted bumpkin, energetically played by Simon Morley) say farewell, to the conman the municipality has bribed in the belief that he is the all-powerful official of the play's title.
Kareena Sims is the bumptious trickster, a clerk with an accent suggesting ideas above his station. This is a classy study in opportunism, greed and boredom, but several smaller roles are also finely done, like the indolent judge of Trev Clarke.
Indifferent cue-taking last night slowed the impetus of the climactic letter-reading scene, when the silly burghers realise they have duped themselves.
That criticism aside, you can't help be impressed. This is busy, detailed acting, and (remarkably) every word heard in unsympathetic acoustics.