Dealer's Choice

Dealer's Choice

21 July, 2008
by: Joe Harrod

To the Menier last Friday for a couple of hours of laughter, tension and heartbreak at the hands of Patrick Marber's poker play, Dealer's Choice. The perfect warm up for a game of our own and an electrifying evening in itself, this play deserves your attention.

Originally written and staged at the National in 1995, Dealer's Choice is arguably better than Marber's more famous relationship drama, Closer. At any rate, people in love are significantly less interesting than friends duking it out over thousands of pounds at the poker table.

Samuel West, actor turned director, gives a subtle and highly sympathetic rendering of this acid sharp character study. The action revolves around a 'friendly' game of poker run in a restaurant basement by control freak proprietor Stephen (Malcolm Sinclair, The History Boys, V For Vendetta) which falls victim to a raid by seasoned poker pro Ash (a charismatic and genuinely scary Roger Lloyd Pack, aka Trigger from Only Fools and Horses).

West's direction and Marber's brilliantly observed script are well served by six excellent performances. Nobody is a bit player in this game, and there are poker lessons along with moral pointers aplenty. Most of the sympathetic characters take an early bath once the game gets underway after the interval, but the power struggles between each player and game boss Stephen are completely riveting.

At once acerbically funny, touching and very cruel, this is a drama with no easy answers and a bleak, hungover finale. There are moments of genuine stomach turning unpleasantness evoked by nothing more than a casual remark, but the whole is nicely balanced with wit, friendship and even charity.

The Menier is a fantastic small theatre and the production uses the space brilliantly. There are almost no bum notes in the piece. Although the techno "time passing" montages could have done with some poker music, perhaps this would have lightened the mood too much.

Each character is utterly believable and you have someone to root for in every conversation, scene and turn of the cards. Will Carl recover his gambling debts? Will Sweeney have enough left for his daughter's outing to the zoo? Will the clownish "Mugsy" win enough to open his own restaurant in a disused toilet on the Mile End Road? You'll have to wait and see.

With riveting subject matter, a powerful but ambivalent message about modern morality and family values, and dozens of hilarious one liners, this is a piece of theatrical confection that will stick with you long after the last hand.

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Joe Harrod