DEALER'S
CHOICE
Trafalgar
Studio 1, London SW1
Opened 11 December, 2007
****
It is rare to encounter a programme essay as illuminating as the one
added to this revival of Patrick Marber's 1995 play on its transfer
into the West End. Writer and sometime poker player Anthony Holden's
article tells us nothing essential
to our enjoyment of Samuel West's production, but much that enriches
the viewing experience. It throws light on the history of the piece,
and its relationship to the culture of poker-playing and the world at
large both then and now.
It is particularly interesting to learn that Ross Boatman, who plays
the chef Sweeney in Marber's fictional restaurant, is a professional
player as well as an actor; he seems so fond of gesture in the first
act that it is hard to believe he could suppress a "tell" at the poker
table, yet in the regular game amongst the restaurant staff in Act Two
he is much more physically disciplined even whilst portraying Sweeney's
psychological disintegration. Holden suggests that Marber views the
play principally as about father-son relationships, but it encompasses
all types of male bond, from actual family to various flavours of
surrogacy to the profound homosociality which leads Sweeney to fret
when told of best friend and flatmate Frankie's planned departure to
turn pro, "But what about me?" It is not so much that poker is a
metaphor for life, more that the game becomes a crucible in which all
such feelings and dynamics are heated until incandescent.
The staging loses some of its physical intimacy in the vertiginous
space of Trafalgar 1, but retains the atmosphere. (Likewise Tom Piper's
design, which after years of portentous walls for the RSC showed a
return to his classic "converta-set" ingenuity, is less striking here
but still appreciably versatile.) The cast remain impressive: Roger
Lloyd Pack as the literally poker-faced pro, Samuel Barnett as the
feckless gambling-addict son, Jay Simpson as Frankie the big fish in a
small pool, Stephen Wight carrying off the comic laurels as the
too-dumb-to-know-he's-a-loser Mugsy, and especially Malcolm Sinclair's
beautifully judged performance as restaurateur and father Stephen. But
above all, it works as an ensemble piece, and suggests that as time
passes Marber's biggest success to date, Closer, may come to be eclipsed by
its predecessor work.
Written for the Financial
Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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