THE GAMBLERS – REVIEW OF 2023 PRODUCTION AT THE KIPOTHEATRO IN PAPAGOU-CHOLARGOS, ATHENS

Reviewed by James Karas 

Nikolai Gogol was a prolific writer, but he finished only three plays. In the West, he is best known for the many incarnations of The Government Inspector, but his other two plays Marriage and The Gamblers are seen infrequently. I was delighted to have a chance to see a production of The Gamblers at the Kipotheatro (Garden Theatre) of the municipality of Papagou-Cholargos, in suburban Athens.

The production is sponsored by the municipality and the play is translated, adapted, and directed by Giorgos Koutlis.

The Gamblers has some colourful characters and a funny plot. Ikharev (Vasilis Mougaliotis), a gambler and master card handler has won the enormous sum of 80,000 rubles by gambling. He stops in a town inn and meets two other sharks, Colonel Krugel (Alexandros Christianopoulos) and Stepan (Giannis Niarros). They decide to team up and bilk Glov (Themis Panou), a rich landowner of 200,000 rubles that he is readying for the marriage of his daughter. They cannot convince him to gamble but his apparently dim son Alexander (Ilias Moulas) is convinced to gamble and he loses 200,000 rubles. But there is a small problem - he does not have the money. But he does give them a promissory note.

The hoped-for duoe (in red) and the cheating masters (dupes?) of The Gamblers  

The three crooks are in a quandary between immediate needs (money) and future expectations.(more money from the promissory note later). Krugel and Stepan agree to sign the note over to Ikharev and in return he will give the two his 80,000. The plot gets complicated and very interesting from then on as true identities are revealed and who cheated whom is discovered only at the end of the play and it is fascinating. Gogol provides some marvelous plot twists.

The production is all Koutlis and he has chosen a style and method of acting for the cast that raises eyebrows. There is some hilarious comedy, especially when Moulas is on stage. He wears red shorts and appears dim-witted as the son of the wealthy landowner and is very funny. He can bring the house down by trying to sit back on a stool. He does not fall off but teeters on the verge of falling and maintains the posture with hilarious results. He produces a gun at one point, again with very funny outcomes. Koutlis deserves credit for choreographing Moulas’s performance as something highly entertaining. Unfortunately, it is the exception.

For the rest of the performances Koutlis chooses overacting, overdoing and undercutting any humorous possibility. The three gamblers yell through their mikes and the humour never comes out. I don’t think I heard more than a twitter of laughter in the first hour of the production. Koutlis believes in fast-forward motion as if this were a video. A card game begins and the actors move as if they are performing under a gun, flailing their arms, contorting their bodies and engaging in a lot of needless activity. It was not funny.

Koutlis has a band on stage with a percussionist (I could not find his name anywhere) a guitar player (played by Giorgos Tzavaras who also plays Alexei, the inn’s servant.) The band frequently plays background music during the dialogue. It was annoying and unnecessary. When a character says a good line, the drummer gives a brief drumroll. It is like the musicians on a late-night talk show hitting the drums when the star says something funny. In The Gamblers it did not work.

There was a  microphone stand centerstage with a microphone on it, of course, and it was frequently used as if were watching a rock concert. It was part of the frenetic pace that Koutlis was trying to create and maintain to questionable effect. There was some audience interaction with the actors and that proved to be funny.

The costumes by Ioanna Tzami were modern non-descript except for Alexander’s outfit and Alexei’s. Tzavaras  wears a woman servant’s apron and I am not sure if we are to take him as a man or a woman. There is no need to worry about him as Tzavaras did a good job in that role as well as a secondary part that I will not disclose.

The production could have worked much better with less effort. Much of the frantic overacting could have been reduced to better effect. At times the actors looked robotic and left the audience cold.

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The Gamblers by Nikolai Gogol in a version translated and adapted by Giorgos Koutlis was performed on July 19 and 20, 2023 at Kipotheatro (Garden Theatre), at Papagou-Cholargos, Athens as part of the Municipal Papagou-Cholargou Festival.  https://festival.dpapxol.gov.gr/

James Karas is the Senior Editor – Culture of The Greek Press.