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ABOUT THE PLAY

Set in Paris at the turn-of-the-century (the 17th into 18th, that is), THE GAMESTER (6 men, 5 women) is a mirror of our own turn-of-the-century America, riddled with too much wealth, too much leisure time, too many casinos, too few women with real power, and too many ways of avoiding reality. Though a comedy, it has darker undertones in its dealings with a compulsive gambler who struggles between his affection for the woman he loves and his passion for the game. Supporting characters in the play are all too familiar reminders of many of our own compulsions, whether sex, obsessive love, money, food or overly righteous morals. It has a humorous but definitely startling modernity which might make us wonder if we've ever learned anything at all. The play is in rhymed couplets, in keeping with the style of the period.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

 

VALERE - Young and handsome, charming, in love with Angelique, addicted to gambling.
ANGELIQUE - Young, beautiful, sensible, a perfect ingenue except for her love for Valère.
HECTOR - Servant to Valère, ageless. A simple loyal man, crafty but devoted to his master.
THOMAS - Father to Valère, loves his son but is fed up with his gambling.
MME SECURITE - 50ish. A wealthy widow who lends young men money in exchange for certain favors.
MME PREFEREE - 30ish. Companion to Angelique. Good sensible woman, looking out for herself as well as her charge.
MME ARGANTE - 40ish. Older sister to Angelique. Shrewish. Also in love with Valere.
DORANTE - 50ish. Old, fat, bald and desperate to marry Angelique.
THE MARQUIS DE FAUXPAS - 40ish. Awkward, foppish, madly in love with Mme. Argante.
BETTY and THE BEGGAR - 20-30. Mme Argante’s maid & the Beggar in the prologue.
CROUPIER - Operates the wheel of Fortune in the gambling hall and plays the creditors.


NOTE: With some minor rewriting the cast can be expanded to 15 or reduced to 9 actors.

 

SCENE SAMPLE

PROLOGUE TO THE GAMESTER

(Just prior to the opening of the play, the CROUPIER walks out on stage, solemn and official, carrying a large stick. He raps the floor 3 times. On the third whack he yells in pain, grabs his foot and limps off. He has erred in the placement of the stick. Music, and the prologue begins.

(Paris. A gambling hall in the early 18th century. All actors in the company except HECTOR & BETTY wear half-masks, so as not to identify them with the characters they will play. They mill about, going from table to table, betting money, losing and winning. This sequence should be highly stylized and choreographed, possibly to music. HECTOR and BETTY stand downstage, facing up and watching the group. Cards are dealt, a wheel spins, we HEAR the sounds of a dog race and/or a cock fight behind a scrim. The characters keep exchanging money with each other, moaning if they must part with it and smiling broadly when they are on the receiving end. After the choreographed sequence, the music grows faint and MME SECURITE comes down and addresses the audience as the other characters continue to play and occasionally comment. HECTOR joins MME SECURITE in the exchange with the audience. NOTE: though I have assigned lines to specific actors each director must decide who will say what)

MME SECURITE

            (Referring to different characters at the tables)

He lost fifteen tonight. But she lost more.

He owes two hundred seven from before.

Chemin-de-fer will catch him every  time.

FAUXPAS

I hate this game.

DORANTE

            (The winner)

                                    Chemin-de fer, sublime!

MME SECURITE

 (To specific people in the audience)

Perhaps you’ll be their 4th for nimble quick!

A game of hearts? I “bet” you’d take a trick

Or two. Perhaps a little écarté?

Don’t shy away—I know you’d like to play.

What’s this? Do I hear voices raised in choral

Admonition at this life immoral?

Don’t scold--it's just a slight divertissement.

The moralists say this is all we want

To do.

ALL

                        What nonsense!

MME SECURITE

                                                            Why, they're simply games.

And look at us! The most distinguished names

Among this great society we live in.

'Twould be bad taste to mention what he’s given

To the neediest of charities.

But careful please, you may lose your chemise.

            (VALERE utters a cry of despair, then sees ANGELIQUE in a special,

            downstage and off to one side)

VALERE

My darling Angelique!

ANGELIQUE

                                    My darling boy!

VALERE

To see you, like a dream—

ANGELIQUE

                                                Exquisite joy!

VALERE

No game can rival—

ANGELIQUE

                                    Yes?

VALERE

                                                The sheer emotion

That fills my heart—

ANGELIQUE

                                    I tremble—

VALERE

                                                            My devotion

Knows no limit—

ANGELIQUE

                                    Ah!

VALERE

                                                Gone the despair

That filled me—

ANGELIQUE

                        Yes, my dearest!

A GAMBLER

                                                Oh, Valère?

They need a fourth for écarté.

VALERE

                                                What’s that?

ANGELIQUE

            (As the light starts to fade on her)

But darling—

VALERE

                        One more game—

ANOTHER GAMBLER

                                                            Here! Bacarrat!

VALERE

And I am done for good—

ANGELIQUE

                                                But—

MME SECURITE

                                                            In this hall,

The power of true love can’t conquer all.

            (VALERE goes back and loses)

He’s lost again.

HECTOR

                        What a surprise.

ANOTHER GAMBLER

            (As VALERE starts to go)

                                                            Don’t stop!

MME SECURITE

With just a roll of dice he’s back on top.

But if one of us dares to run amok

With, shall we say, a turn of rotten luck...

We understand. We care. We sympathize.

A little prudence is what we advise.

Things change.

FAUXPAS

What's up will fall--

MME SECURITE

            (Definitely a double meaning)

            What's down will rise.

MARQUIS

I'll raise you ten.

 MME PREFEREE

                                                And I'll raise you fifteen.

DORANTE

Eleven-ha!

PREFEREE

                        Oh no, he trumped my queen!

MME SECURITE

What else is there to do with leisure time?

Are faro and casino such a crime?

Piquet or pyramids, trente et quarante,

Just name your game—we’ll give you what you want.

BETTY (AS THE BEGGAR)

Oh please, sir, spare a penny for some bread.

DORANTE

Why not? Tonight I came out way ahead.

MME SECURITE

Voilà—when we do well, they benefit.

The money trickles down—

HECTOR

                                                How fortunate.

MME SECURITE

Life is but tragedy or comedy,

And we prefer the latter, as you see.

‘Tis true, the turn of any century

Is always marked by optimism.

ALL

                                                                        Yes!

MME SECURITE

And winning means you're dripping with success.

Play on! This is, as all of us agree…

ALL

The most exciting time in history!

(They mill about more quickly and excitedly, getting noisier and more agitated,

higher highs and lower lows, as the lights fade to black)


What the critics are saying
about The Gamester:

 

"A specialist in applying new spit and polish to Moliere classics, Freyda Thomas turns to his comparatively obscure junior contemporary Jean-Francois Regnard in "The Gamester," based on the latter's 1696 "Le Joueur." Less an adaptation than a new commedia inspired by the original work's basic plot outline, this sparkling farce about a compulsive gambler has no trouble bridging a 310-year gap in audience tastes. And Ron Lagomarsino's American Conservatory Theater staging reps one of that entity's more purely enjoyable productions in some time."

Dennis Harvey
Variety.com

 

"The dice are cast. The wheel spins until the final curtain falls. The actors play the cards they're dealt. If all theater is to some extent a gamble, the American Conservatory Theater has drawn a winner with Freyda Thomas' clever reshuffling of an old deck in "The Gamester," which opened to great waves of laughter Wednesday at the Geary Theater........It isn't all luck, of course. Thomas has crafted her comedy skillfully upon the fairly solid frame of a little-known 17th century French farce."

Robert Hurwitt
San Francisco Chronicle

 

"The ante has been officially upped at A.C.T., thanks to a new and robust production that, for better or worse, raises the sky high for the rest of the 2004-5 season....Freyda Thomas' interpretation of the Moliere-influenced production is beoyond clever and great fodder for actors to feed upon."

Tiffany Maleshefski
San Francisco Examiner

 

"The Gamester is an intriguing hybrid of old and new. Its plot and characters are based…on a 1696 work by Jean-Francois Regnard, an aristocratic adventurer and writer who was a younger contemporary of Moliere at the Comedie Francaise in Paris…But the actual dialogue of the play—the bristling, insightful, richly comic and deliciously rhymed lines that audiences are now responding to—is the work of Freyda Thomas, a contemporary playwright who specializes in modern verse translations of Moliere and other 17th century dramatists. Thomas is devilishly good at what she does—mixing the verbal musicality of an earlier theatrical style with the sensibility of modern life…The Gamester is charms on every level."

Hedy Weiss
The Chicago Tribune