High hopes for local premiere of solo show, 'A Gambler's Guide to Dying'

A Gamblers Guide to Dying weighs up the odds of living an extraordinary life.

The Basement Theatre has been a second home to John Burrows who's worked in the box office since he was 17, produced plays for other people to appear in and helped out behind the bar.

Now, seven years on, he's taking a gamble and appearing on stage — alone — in a play in which he will be surrounded by an audience for 75 minutes and portray up to 16 characters. Nervous? Naturally, but Burrows is confident A Gambler's Guide to Dying will work its magic on New Zealand audiences in the same way it charmed him when he saw it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2015.

Back then, the North Aucklander was in the United Kingdom working on a big production when he saw the small show which made him sit up and want to obtain the rights to perform it in New Zealand.

He'd been wrangling "zombies" on The Generation of Z, the New Zealand-made immersive theatre production which went from Auckland to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to a four-month London season in less than two years. It opened in London on the day Burrows had been due to join his classmates and graduate from Unitec with a Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts.

Theatre-maker John Burrows.

Four months later, when it closed, Burrows rewarded himself with a trip to the 2015 Edinburgh Fringe Festival to see as much theatre as he could. One show, receiving fantastic reviews, caught his eye but he had to put his name on a wait list because it had sold out.

Obtaining a return ticket, Burrows loved every minute of Gary McNair's play about a man reminiscing about the relationship he'd had with his beloved grandfather. It reminded Burrows of his own grandfather, Richard John, who he remembers playing the card game Patience with, and who was always optimistic and in a good mood.

"He died when I was 11," says Burrows. "When he started to get ill, we didn't see him as much. I don't know if that's a male thing — that he didn't want us to see him — but when I did, he'd gone from a man I knew and recognised to someone where something seemed to be missing.

"I was trying to deal with that and the first recognition that I'd had of mortality. Part of my connection with the play is because I don't entirely know if I had or have fully dealt with those emotions. There are lines in this show that have an unavoidable honesty to them."

Burrows sums up A Gambler's Guide to Dying as a play about a man trying to process a boy's grief and considering childhood with adult eyes, but says it's also about taking chances to try to make the most out of life.

Set in Glasgow — Burrows can switch immediately into the appropriate accent — it opens after the 1966 Fifa World Cup which England has won, earning one Scotsman a handsome payday but the ire of his neighbours.

Determined not to get carried away, he pledges to put a £10 bet on something every Saturday and, on walks to the bookies, regales his young grandson with what they'll do if they win. When he becomes ill, the stakes are raised to life and death as the grandad is determined to live long enough to see turn of the millennium.

"There's a positivity to it that makes a difficult subject more poignant for me," says Burrows, whose own theatre company Burrowed Time is producing the play.

While it's his first-time on stage in a couple of years, Burrows has a strong team behind him; Jennifer Ward-Lealand directs, while composer/musician Paul McLaney, who's been working with Pop-up Globe, is the sound designer.

Lowdown
What: A Gambler's Guide To Dying
Where & when: Basement Theatre Studio; Tuesday, June 12 — Saturday, June 23