Review: ‘A Gambler’s Guide to Dying’: One-man show is a good bet

Playwright Gary McNair’s solo show “A Gambler’s Guide to Dying,” now at the Ruskin Group Theatre, is a pithy picaresque about an irrepressible Scotsman who shares tall tales -- and a lifelong love of gambling -- with his devoted, dazzled grandson.

Whether McNair’s story is autobiographical or not is a bit unclear, but he approaches his subject with an Ancestry.com specificity that makes us believe it is. The protagonist of the piece is colorful Archie Campbell, who holds forth to his fascinated young grandson about his checkered life. But as facts blur and accounts vary, it becomes evident that Archie is a world-class rascal, a tale-spinning truth embellisher who apparently won a small fortune on the 1966 World Cup -- but then, any of Archie’s reminiscences are clearly to be taken with a grain of salt.

When Archie is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the late 1990s, he parlays his carefully hoarded winnings into the biggest bet of his lifetime: a wager that he will live until the new millennium, long past the outermost predictions of when he will die. It’s a race against mortality that commands headlines and puts the scrappy Archie firmly in the public eye.

To reveal whether Archie wins his wager would be a spoiler. Suffice to say that McNair’s tale is a charmer, as is performer Maury Sterling, a compact and dynamic American actor with a thick Scottish brogue you would swear is genuine. In concert with director Paul Linke, Sterling brings McNair’s family yarn to vivid life.

It’s true that McNair can be a bit philosophically prosaic at times, especially in his repetitive fulminations about mortality and the commonality of death. However, thanks to Sterling and Linke’s combined efforts, Archie emerges as a memorable scoundrel who audaciously mythicizes his own life, going toe to toe with the Reaper in his tallest and most entertaining tale.

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“A Gambler’s Guide to Dying”

Where: Ruskin Group Theatre, 3000 Airport Ave., Santa Monica

When: 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends April 29. No performances March 25-27.

Tickets: $25

Info: (310) 397-3244. https://ww.ruskingrouptheatre.com

Running time: 1 hour, 10 minutes

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