'Dealer's Choice' review — go all in on Patrick Marber's tight, funny firecracker of a poker play

Read our review of Dealer's Choice, starring Hammed Animashaun, Alfie Allen and Brendan Coyle, now in performances at the Donmar Warehouse to 7 June.

In 1995 Richard Eyre took a gamble on Patrick Marber and staged his debut play, which hinges on a tense poker game, at the National Theatre. Thirty years on that looks like an impressively savvy bet, as this anniversary production, assuredly directed by Matthew Dunster, demonstrates just what a tight, funny firecracker of a piece Marber has crafted.

It’s also sneakily devastating. Dealer’s Choice vividly matches the bluster and swagger of its fast-talking characters (shades of Mamet, Pinter and Tarantino in their sweary repartee), but there is always something darker just beneath, simmering away like the sauce on chef Sweeney’s stove.

The action takes place on one fateful night at a small London restaurant owned by Stephen. He runs a regular poker game with his employees – Sweeney, waiters Mugsy and Frankie – and his son Carl. This week’s game is invaded by a stranger, Ash: Carl claims he’s a former teacher, but in fact Carl, a hopeless gambling addict, owes Ash thousands of pounds.

With admirable concision, Marber lays out both the lighter, teasing bond between the staff and the emotional tie they all have to their potential poker winnings. Mugsy wants to start his own business, Sweeney has a rare outing with his young daughter (and knows he should just keep his money safe – of course he won’t), while Frankie dreams of moving to Vegas.

Money is also the fraught element that attracts and repels the father and son, like warring magnets. Stephen had to bail out Carl after he bounced cheques all around town, but he insists on him attending the poker game to learn self-discipline. Or is it really a way of controlling him, or forcing a relationship? Or, more bleakly, do they actually share a compulsion for danger?

Marber was himself a keen poker player and sometime gambling addict, and his thorough knowledge of the game ensures a brilliant use of it as a dramatic frame – everything from the evocative poetry of the terminology to the psychological insights it provides. It’s both luck and strategy, about what you have but also how you read others, tilting between courage, fear, obsession, control, hope, and total self-destruction.

An explosively charismatic Hammed Animashaun is the clear standout as the stubbornly optimistic Mugsy, who plans to buy a former public loo on the Mile End Road and turn it into an upscale restaurant. It’s a tour-de-force performance, milking every laugh (his crestfallen face when a grumpy customer demands his Snickers bar perhaps the best), but also forlorn and vulnerable when he pleads for respect.

Excellent too are Alfie Allen as the cocky Frankie, Theo Barklem-Biggs as the gruff Sweeney – impressively juggling the lightning-fast dialogue and some actual live cooking – Kasper Hilton-Hille’s resentful, snivelling failson, and Daniel Lapaine effectively calling into question Stephen’s form of tough love. Brendan Coyle could bring more menace to the pro gambler; he’s best when Ash is at his lowest.

Moi Tran’s set gives us industrial kitchen chic in the first half and then flashily plunges us into the subterranean depths for the poker game, made more immersive and jittery by a spinning revolve, like a hellish fairground ride. It’s a gripping portrait of male relationships at their base, competitive level: in order to win, you must destroy. Go all in on this darkly entertaining gem.

Dealer's Choice is at the Donmar Warehouse to 7 June.

Photo credit: Dealer's Choice (Photos by Helen Murray)