Dealer's Choice

 

At the Donmar, this revival of Patrick Mather’s play about masculinity, gambling,and fathers and sons  is sharp and properly funny, although all versions of these men are lying to themselves as well as everyone else  Women are hardly relevant in this at all as the men banter and argue and their different relationships and motivations are uncovered.  

Stephen  (Daniel Lapaine) owns a restaurant and runs a Sunday night poker night after hours for his staff but really as a way of connection with his gambling addicted son, Carl (a fragile Kasper Hilton-Hille).  Meanwhile Chef Sweeney (Theo Barklem-Biggs)knows he has a gambling problem and tries to resist so he can spend his money with his daughter.  Frankie (Alfie Allen) is cocky and a bad loser but wants to become a professional poker player.  Ash (Brendan Coyle in his tough guy mode) is an already a professional gambler and second father figure to Carl , although we find that he is probably just another mug in the game after all - no-one ever really wins.  Star of the show though is Mugsy (Hammed Animashaun) who wants to win enough money to buy a public toilet on Mile End Road and convert it to a restaurant.  I think we are supposed to laugh at him but to be honest I have seen stranger places for restaurants, and his character is warm and full of charm so I was rooting for him.   

The first half sets up the characters and in the second half we get the game itself.  The set is pretty impressive and the transformation in the second half where we get taken down into the basement is very clever, or rather it was when it worked..We had a 10 minute delay when the floor failed to rise so that we could get into the basement and so everything needed to be reset. It was worth the wait though, and I always enjoy those little glimpses of the workings that usually go unremarked.

Anyway, in the second half, stakes turn out to be high and we get a brilliant standoff between Carl’s two father figures.  All of the plans made by each character to keep to sensible limits go out of the window in the heat of the moment as they each think that they can win, choosing each time to stay in the game.  Using a poker game to draw out the tensions, not a new technique but it’s very effective, we see everything unravel for each of the characters in different ways.  With the final line from Carl  ‘see you next Sunday’ though, it’s clear that nothing has really changed, they are still stuck in the same loop.  

Performances were all spot on, and the dialogue was so fast it sparkled in places, with funny lines being scattered about everywhere.  I thought some of the arguments were a bit too shouty sometimes but in all other respects this was really well done.   One thing I do want to know though is how they manage to play cards and say what they are without getting into a muddle.  I was up in the gods and had a fairly good view of the table and from what I could see the cards on the table didn’t match the cards they were saying - that makes my brain hurt and appreciate the jobs the actors were doing even more .

An interesting play to revive, but sadly I suspect that nothing much has changed.  Although I wonder if it was being written nowadays we might have got some more variety of masculinity on display, both toxic and otherwise.