Gamblers Never Die

Arts
The Newfoundland Herald, November 25, 1989
Gamblers Never Die is a remarkable achievement

By Peter Gard

Bobby Mercer (Brian Downey) is a young, hot shot poker player with two sin-loving live-in girlfriends and a yen to make a half-million and to see the world. Doyle "Dolly" O'Brien (Howard Jerome) is an older professional gambler and the ruler of the poker roost in St. John's.

Against the advice of girlfriends Genny (Alison Woolridge) and Didi (Sheilagh Guy), Bobby decides to break Dolly with an elaborate ploy, using a stacked deck. The setting for the confrontation is an all-night poker game in a seedy downtown hotel.

Four other players are in for the action. J.T. (Glenn Downey) and "Rook" (Pete Soucy) are two local losers who have come up with a set of secret hand signals which they are sure will win them the game. An aged, stuffy Englishman, Ted Littlejohn (Doug Seymour), hides his passion for poker and for the downstairs barmaid behind a runny veneer of gamesmanship and gentlemanly manners.

The sixth man around the table is an unknown quantity. He is Charlie Smegal (Frank McAnulty) and he runs a Toyota dealership in Toronto. Dolly describes him as a "fish", a sure loser, with a lot to lose. Charlie's outlandish and aggressive performance at the poker table is the central event of the first act. Bobby and Dolly's half-million dollar showdown is the cental action of the second.

Gamblers Never Die is a remarkable achievement for a first play. Writer/director Ed Martin knows his material well: he has played poker professionally in both the small fish bowl of St. John's and the much larger fish bowl of Las Vegas.

As the Artistic Director of the Elysian Players, and as a passionate theatre-goer in New York and London, he is also no stranger to the workings of the stage.

Gamblers Never Die is a thoroughly modern, rushed and relentless, bad-mouthed comedy in the manner of David Mamet or Richard Pryor. Everyone is crooked. Everyone is on the make. Everyone is as colourful as a washroom wall and as see-through as Swiss cheese. Most of all, everyone is wonderfully and unpleasantly funny.

As with Mamet, behind the humour there is a point. Or maybe even two. Men in groups aren't nice. Men in poker groups are at their absolute worst. Poker demands the kind of psyche-them-out games which other male business dealings merely suggest.

So Martin has a clear playing field -- a poker table -- before him, and he marches up and down it with wonderful impunity for two hours. He creates and destroys characters in a trice. Like the master poker player that he is, he alternately appeals to our safe and seamy sides. The story has been set up so that it is possible to secretly hope for both Bobby's victory and his downfall. Will Bobby win out, take his money and his two honeys and run? Or will Dolly or Charlie or one of the other players catch Bobby at his tricks? Which would you bet on? That's poker. That's theatre.

There is a weak spot to Gamblers Never Die: Martin eventually cuts his punches and pulls back. He initially shocks us with the boorishness of his characters. Behind their boyish joie de vivre, one gets the sense that they might do anything and probably will by the end of the play. They are addicts, after all, addicts of chance. When one of the players keels over, they simply carry on the game. The stage has been set for a second surprise turn, some sort of horrific and revelatory showdown and this feeling is much enhanced by the noisy arrival of Genny and Didi. I found the end scenes, though, to be anticlimactic. Martin goes for a Hollywood ending and a Hollywood feeling. Poker players are maybe nice guys after all, loveable even. The game goes on.

This is the reassuring moral of a thousand movies. Supposedly, any behaviour is excusable if it entertains. With this kind of ending, Gamblers Never Die succeeds as a piece of commercial theatre. But it could also have been much more. Mr. Martin has narrowly missed finding a deeper level and a more enduring reason for his play.

The roles in Gamblers Never Die are juicy and the acting on opening night was strong. Top marks, in my opinion, went to locals Sheilagh Guy, Brian Downey and Doug Seymour, and to Torontonians Frank McAnulty and Howard Jerome.

The stooge "Rook" is a rich role which Pete Soucy, I think, continued to develop as the run progressed. As the set and poster designer, he clearly had his hands full.

I wasn't so happy with J.T. J.T. is a badgerer and loudmouth and Gelnn Downey is a bit of a badgerer as an actor. The role could stand more human habitation. The same holds true for Alison Woolridge's Genny Snelgrove, whose blasts of fury and excess seemed forced next to Sheilagh Guy's superbly lascivious and manipulative good time girl, Didi Diamond.

Brian Downey's great talent, among others, is the way he modulates his presence. One moment he is part of the furniture, and the next moment he is centre stage. As an actor he is sure-footed and knows when to make his moves, and how to enjoy a role. He was in full form as Bobby and a joy to watch.

Howard Jerome, as Dolly, was a commanding presence but by no means an overbearing one. He has a voice with the resonance of a pond full of frogs and the build of a wrestler. He would be rather hard to ignore. He floods the stage with energy; the exciting thing about this production is that the rest of the cast keeps up.

Frank McAnulty as Charlie has precisely the opposite kind of role to play: that of a little wimp of a guy who, like Danny DeVito, commands attention only because he is totally obnoxious. McAnulty played this difficult part with wonderful, blaring finesse. Within about 15 seconds one rather liked the bugger, the way one might like a mosquito, but only after it has spent two hours whining in the bedroom.

Doug Seymour was a very likeable, deadpan Ted Littlejohn. He gave a quiet performance in a play full of noise. It was a performance which immediately grabbed one's attention and then held it in a sticky grip throughout the play.

Ed Martin's direction was a little on the nervous and controlled side, but this was hardly surprising as he was directing his own premiere. I've certainly never seen him direct a comedy so well. Kathy Devine and April Yetman's costumes were spot on, and Pete Soucy provided a very workable, if somewhat colourless, last-minute set.

It had originally been planned that Colin Macnee do the set. One of Macnee's very accomplished painings, My Room, was hung over the couch in tribute and memory to the artist.