Writer: Hannah Walker and Rosa Postlethwaite
Director: Paula Penman
Any trip to the theatre is a gamble. Sometimes, you hit the theatrical jackpot, and the payoff changes your life forever. It is only fitting, though, that Hannah Walker’s play about the dangers of gambling addiction offers none of this satisfaction – Gamble is a risk that doesn’t pay off.
As Walker’s real experiences testify, the UK’s crisis of gambling addiction deserves to be taken seriously. Walker wrote the play based on her relationship with a man with an addiction to online gambling, and in doing so demonstrated how the harms of these habits extend far beyond the addicted person themselves. This play tells the story of a woman in despair, the casino encroaching further and further into her life, with the omnipresence of online gambling demanding a level of surveillance of her partner that stops any semblance of trust from building up. The story itself was clearly extremely difficult to live through, and the contrast between the flashing lights of the casino and the grim reality of its consequences has much dramatic potential.
Instead of drama, however, this performance delivers an hour-long public service announcement. The intimate, emotional rollercoaster Walker describes over the course of the monologue feels impersonal and detached, thanks to the entire piece being narrated in third person, in an inconsistent American accent, and a performance that feels oddly half-hearted. The themes of the show are not woven into complex, interesting characters with flaws, arcs, or even names. Walker’s partner is not named in the show, for obvious reasons, but dubbing him ‘the hairy man’ and giving him absolutely zero existence as a character beyond his interactions with Walker and gambling machines makes him feel as one-dimensional as the multimedia displays above the set. Instead of a complex narrative, this show flashes dance number after lazily-choreographed dance number at the audience, to punctuate the expository monologues on how harmful gambling is.
Each performance is followed by a Q&A session with Dr Matthew Gaskell, clinical lead for the NHS Northern Gambling Service; and the day after, the creative team host a coffee morning, to provide a space for people who have been impacted by the themes of the show to talk to each other about their experiences. Both of these additions to the show are commendable, and demonstrate the real thought, and heart, and good intentions that went into making it. The fact that every show is also interpreted live into British Sign Language by a wonderfully charismatic performer, Faye Alvi, is a phenomenal sign of the progress theatre is making towards accessibility, and her integration feels natural.
It is ultimately a shame that not nearly as much heart or passion went into the creation of the play itself. Entire songs are performed with no lyrical significance to anything in the play, including a long rendition of ‘We’re Going to Ibiza!’ by Vengaboys, which serves merely to reiterate that the main character is, indeed, going to Ibiza. Songs from The Greatest Showman seem to come up only because this is in fact a show (‘the greatest’ is a stretch). These are karaoke numbers that do not reveal anything about the characters, the story or the gambling industry – they merely fill time and leave a numb feeling afterward (perhaps there’s a comparison to gambling after all!).
As the play’s programme states, there are around 24 million people in the UK who participate in online gambling, and gambling has the highest suicide rate of all addictions. Art that raises awareness of this crisis, and actively facilitates productive discussions afterward, is a force for good. But lazy theatre does a disservice to the effort required to do justice to this topic.
Perhaps, if you have a personal connection with true stories of gambling addiction, or are generally sensitive to karaoke-laden monologues about serious topics, you’ll take something worthwhile from this show.
But don’t bet on it.
Runs until 28th March 2024
