The Gamblers is a sharp-witted performance that leaves the audience questioning their observation skills and warns them against contemplating another game of cards, even if it is a simple game of snap.
In a tale that is about playing people rather than playing games, Greyscale and Dundee Rep Ensemble teach the audience a simple lesson: never trust a gambler. Watching seasoned cheat and gambler Iharev being taken in and cooperating with gambling trio, Krugel, Uteshitelny and Shvohnev seems too good to be true.
Full of tricks and troublesome con-artists, director Selma Dimitrijevic and adaptor Mikhail Durnenkov educate the audience in the art of deception with their adaptation of Nikolai Gogol‘s classic play that boasts an all female cast.
Gogol is an author that has been accused of being misogynistic in his depiction of women. Dimitrijevic and Durnenkov reclaim their right to his work through their all-female adaptation, supported by award winning Scottish theatre company Stellar Quines.
While the script adapted for a female cast challenges any ideas of misogyny that could be found in the original text, I found myself somewhat missing the point. Was it posing the question of women playing roles in everyday life as a feminist reading to the play? Or was it women playing men for the sake of challenging Gogol?
While the all female cast left me with a bit of a question mark over the whole performance, the cast individually were not to be faulted. Zoe Lambert was particularly strong in her changing depictions of Gavryushka, Old Glov and Zamikhryshkin.
The audience themselves will be pleased that a bet was not taken at the beginning, as they too would have been left out of pocket by this cunning trio. The Gamblers is a play for a rainy afternoon and leaves an audience with a smile and a warning: gamblers are not people to mess with.