DEALER'S CHOICE. To 29 March.
London
DEALER’S CHOICE
by Patrick Marber.
Trafalgar Studios (Studio 1) To 29 March 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
transfer from the Menier Chocolate Factory.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6632 (booking fee).
www.theambassadorscom/trafalgarstudios
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 October.
Royal flush of a production.
Sheffield’s loss is Southwark’s gain. Samuel West, briefly artistic director at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre, gives a markedly humane tone to the micro-world of amateur gamblers in his Menier revival of Patrick Marber’s debut play. The first act’s sharp humour sets-off the darker compulsions that emerge when waiters and chefs settle down to an early-hours session with a pack of cards and piles of chips.
It’s a staff institution each weekend, after Stephen’s restaurant closes for business. Marber weaves personal obsessions through the game. Young Mugsy has ambitions beyond his reach, Sweeney has a rare Sunday with his 5-year old daughter coming up, but the money he’s set aside for it could come in handy for the game. Frankie has problems beneath the cool surface. He and Sweeney end up looking different from the contented Mugsy-baiting duo they first seemed.
Stephen, apparently in control, feels a desperate need for his son Carl, who holds him emotionally at bay as his own life drifts along. It’s a conglomeration of needs, kept secret by the “house rules” Stephen imposes to give order to the little, temporary world. And this time it’s interrupted by the stranger Ash, who has some kind of link to young Carl.
As the chips fly, there’s analysis of poker-players’ psyche, the desire to win or the underlying urge to lose. Stephen Wight’s Mugsy, inanely trumpeting “Demons” (for diamonds), with his sudden rush when new funds appear, is the simplest example. It’s more complex in Roger Lloyd Pack’s laconic visitor, in whom grim humour and sinister insistence are alternating symptoms of compulsive need.
Finally, Ash is matched in wit as in card-hand with Malcolm Sinclair’s Stephen. But West uncovers the play’s heart in the contrast between Stephen’s certainty with employees and his flailing around to connect with drifting son Carl (a restaurant-owner’s son who delivers pizzas). Sinclair and Samuel Barnett, whose initially gentle features contrast the motorcycle-helmet he drags in, before being hardened by fury against his father, both discover, with their director,a complexity in the relationship to match, and matter more than, all the intrigues at the poker-table.
Mugsy: Stephen Wight.
Sweeney Ross Boatman.
Stephen: Malcolm Sinclair.
Frankie: Jay Simpson.
Carl: Samuel Barnett.
Ash: Roger Lloyd Pack.
Director: Samuel West.
Designer: Tom Piper.
Lighting: Neil Austin.
Sound: Gareth Owen.
Composer: Terry Davies.
2007-10-11 02:02:13