Theatre review: Dealer's Choice

Dealer's Choice is a play I've got a bit of history with: I saw the original 1995 production at what was then called the Cottesloe at the National, and was so impressed with it that I chose one of its scenes to workshop as part of my university directing course. I also caught the Menier's 2007 revival, and that clearly made an impact too, as it turns out my memory of who originally played the characters was a mix of those two casts. So it was hard to resist Matthew Dunster's 30th anniversary production at the Donald and Margot Warehouse, now coming to it as a play I'm in many ways very familiar with, but at the same time haven't encountered in 18 years. Patrick Marber's debut play takes place in a small, barely-afloat restaurant owned and run by Stephen (Daniel Lapaine,) with the help of an all-male skeleton staff who join him every Sunday night after closing for their weekly poker game.

Also a regular is Stephen's son Carl (Kasper Hilton-Hiile,) formerly addicted to slot machines but now supposedly cured; if anyone was fooled about that it'll be hard to keep up the pretence after this night, which comes with an unexpected extra player.

Claiming to be an old teacher of Carl's, Ash (Brendan Coyle) is in fact a professional poker player who's taken him under his wing - including covering many of his losses. Now Carl owes him four grand, which Ash needs urgently to pay off his own much larger debts. With his protégé unable to pay up, they decide on a plan to have Ash pretend to be a novice and join a friendly game that has a tendency to go up to alarmingly high stakes, and hustle the cash he needs from Carl's father and his employees.

Dunster's production keeps the action in 1995, and both Ben and I found Holly Khan's sound design particularly evocative of the specific time - including songs like House of Pain's "Jump Around" and TLC's "Waterfalls" that were ubiquitous at the time but you don't hear much since. The amounts of money driving the plot also say a lot about inflation in the last thirty years - the stakes in a "friendly" poker school still feel eye-watering if not quite life-ruining today, but the £3000 needed to put a deposit on a new business might as well be a leather purse full of guineas in terms of how much it dates the story.

Overall the play has stood the test of time pretty well if not quite having the audience impact - including on me - it once had. With the emphasis on Carl and his two competing father figures, it does feel like the remaining trio of the restaurant staff are underdeveloped, never quite rising above the comic relief they're originally set up as, despite Theo Barklem-Biggs as chef Sweeney and Alfie Allen as waiter Frankie giving them both plenty of nervous energy under the banter.

Best-off is Hammed Animashaun who gets the show-stealing role of Mugsy, the Shakespearean fool so blindly optimistic he continues to rate his chances of victory even while cheerfully embracing the nickname that says the others openly treat him as the mug of the game. He's a character who could be mined for his own darker, self-destructive impulses, but Animashaun convinces you his breezy self-confidence will likely make him sail through life more easily than any of the other more self-aware characters*.

For me the weak link was Coyle, who makes Ash a fairly bland monosyllabic villain, without the edge of nervous danger from someone who's owed money and trying to appear menacing, but at the same time is under much greater menace from the much more dangerous people he owes it to in turn. But Marber definitely feels ahead of his time in the creation of Lapaine's Stephen, the real danger to everyone around him: The control freak who encourages everyone's weaknesses so he can watch them fail then step in as stern judge, wise mentor or generous benefactor†.

Moi Tran's design uses quite a similar device to the original production to take us from the restaurant's kitchen to the basement for the second act, but here instead of being done in the interval it's incorporated as an opening coup de théâtre as we go into the game space; but also using the original's conceit of the table revolving during poker hands falls a bit flat here. In other words Dealer's Choice has aged interestingly, not necessarily hitting quite the same comic or shocking notes it once did, and I'm not entirely convinced Dunster's production builds to the levels of tension it could have done. But in other ways some of the insight it has into toxic male friendships feels more astute with the passing of time.

Dealer's Choice by Patrick Marber is booking until the 7th of June at the Donmar Warehouse.

Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.

*although in another sign of the play now being a period piece, the biggest running gag of the evening, that Mugsy wants to open his own restaurant in a former public toilet in Bow, didn't even register as a joke to tonight's audience - much madder projects have opened for real since then

†the biggest gasp of the evening comes when, having gone to great lengths to ensure Sweeney plays tonight despite wanting to skip the game, Stephen sneers at him for losing the money he needed for his daughter, then loans it to him in return for overtime. Stephen also encourages his own son to channel his slot machine addiction into poker on the dubious logic that it will encourage discipline, then takes no responsibility for the inevitable, wider gambling addiction it develops into