Anna Burnside reviews the return of a Fringe favourite from ten years ago.
Did Gary McNair, one of Scotland’s most engaging storytellers, get the genes from his grandpa? McNair senior was a chancer and bullshitter, latterly a gardener and devoted—if unconventional—companion to young Gary. Calling him a character only scratches the surface of his multitudes.
McNair opens this delicious shaggy dog piece with a retelling of one of Grampa’s best loved and most heavily embroidered tales. It’s set in a terrifying bar in the Gorbals in 1966. When England win the world cup, McNair senior is the only drinker punching the air.
Turns out he has backed them in some kind of fiendish accumulator and won a never-quite-disclosed-but-impressive sum of money.
This show, which ran in the same venue in 2015, retains all the charm of the original. McNair brilliantly inhabits his younger self; his own naive delight in the auld fella’s yarns sit beside other folks’ more adult reactions to his carry on.
And when he wagers on himself living to see the Millennium while suffering from late-stage pancreatic cancer, it’s the fitting end to a life that has been rich and long. Long in Gorbals years anyway, Gramps has created a system that factors in the area’s woeful health statistics by adding on a third.
If there’s a better show about luck, destiny and life expectancy in the Gorbals, I’ll eat my betting slip.
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A Gambler’s Guide to Dying performs at Traverse Theatre (Traverse Two) until August 24, 2025. For performance times and details, go to the company’s website.
Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic.
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