Another triumph for Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young at Sadler’s Wells

It must have been hard for Crystal Pite and Jonathan Young to live up to the success of 2016’s devastating Betroffenheit. In Revisor, their imaginative retelling of Nikolai Gogol’s satirical comedy of errors The Government Inspector (Revizor in the original Russian), Pite and Young draw on familiar techniques: dancers from Pite’s company, Kidd Pivot, lip-sync to actors’ voiceovers, their movements synchronising with, or playing off, the text.

Ghoulish and farcical, Pite’s choreography is knife-sharp, the performers eye-wateringly good. Imagine watching a stage full of puppets, twitching without strings, sashaying between menace and campy drama. Rena Narumi, as thuggish Interrogator Klak, and Tiffany Tregarthen as the skittish Revisor (voiced by Young himself), are particularly good.

Anyone familiar with Betroffenheit and waiting for the left hook straight to the heart won’t be disappointed. The pantomime-for-grown-ups version of The Government Inspector breaks down and crumbles away. The soundtrack judders. The stage is reset. The performers return, but wearing slacks and T-shirts instead of character-appropriate uniforms.