Review: DEALER'S CHOICE, Starring Alfie Allen

"If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you." In Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice (revived at Donmar Warehouse on its 30th anniversary), it is increasingly hard to tell who around the table isn’t a sucker.

Every week, restaurant owner Stephen, his employees (waiters Mugsy and Frankie and chef Sweeney) and his son Carl walk down into the basement for a game of Texas Hold ‘Em. Or Omaha. Or sometimes a complex and highly customised variety thought up by Mugsy. Round and round they go until the early hours playing hand after hand until there is an overall winner. It’s a ritual that binds these men together and informs their everyday relationship upstairs.

The luckless Carl owes money to his father, to the cook Sweeney but most of all to Mugsy. As his name suggests, Mugsy is a naive man who is happy to forgive the debt as long as Carl helps him realise his dream: a restaurant along the busy Mile End Road ("maybe French, maybe Italian") situated in what is currently a public convenience. 

This plot, fertile with tense rivalry and frustrated ambitions was Marber's first creation for the stage. He is arguably one of the more underrated writers this country has produced. He worked with Armando Ianucci on two BBC shows, the seminal The Day Today and an early Alan Partridge series. In the theatre, he is best known for 1997’s Closer; a brutal examination of the sexual relationships between two couples, it was later turned into a film with Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Julia Roberts. More recently, he has directed in the West End and on Broadway. 

He is currently on the Great White Way helming a starry revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (Bill Burr, Kieran Culkin, Michael McKean and Bob Odenkirk!), another all-male set in a competitive environment. There are other parallels too: like Mamet, Marber’s dialogue is snappier than a hungry crocodile, the blokey back-and-forth macho banter reminiscent of Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Truth bombs are lobbed around casually in between lusty inquisitions, boasts and bragging.

Inevitably, the muscular posturing gives way to more tender scenes that, in the Donmar’s intimate setting, hit home as hard as they did three decades ago. It’s a talented cast with the marquee name here being Alfie Allen. After his harrowing seven-season Game Of Thrones stint, he is on confident ground here as the hotshot wannabe pro Frankie, looking to escape to Vegas as soon as he hits a jackpot.

Theo Barklem-Biggs brings heart to Sweeney, caught between the lure of the game and spending time with his daughter. Hammed Animashaun is the highlight of the night as the rambunctious Mugsy, a larger-than-life character who screams out “Demons!” every time a diamond card is played while desperately yearning after respect from his boss and colleagues. Brendan Coyle is the perfect Ash, his laidback demeanour belying his deep debts.

The direction from Matthew Dunster (who has worked with Alfie’s sister Lily on three productions) couldn’t be much tighter as the two-hours-plus running time sprints away. In the first act, the clever set from Moi Tran moves the action between the small area into the kitchen and the dining lounge before lifting up after the interval to reveal the basement with its poker table and a sharply-lit staircase. The transition is seamless and shifts us completely from one setting into another beautifully. Sally Ferguson’s evocative light design keeps our attention focussed exactly where it should be while setting the mood with aplomb. 

It’s a shame that Marber doesn’t quite stick the landing, ending the play in a mess of predictable sentimentality. The weak finale is redeemed to some extent through a superlative performance at the close. Kasper Hilton-Hille keeps his end up as Carl but is almost totally overshadowed by Daniel Lapaine’s espresso-intense acting once Stephen realises that, not only is his son condemned to be a slave to gambling for the rest of his life, but that the rotten apple didn’t fall far from the tree. 

Dealer’s Choice continues at Donmar Warehouse until 7 June.