Review: HOUSE OF GAMES, Hampstead Theatre

In 1987, David Mamet's House of Games intrigued us in the cinema. Sure we’d seen The Sting, but few had read the 1940 book, The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man, the televised and online poker boom was still a decade or so in the future and the BBC’s The Real Hustle wasn’t even a twinkle in Alexis Conran's eye. To say nothing of its writer/director’s current hero, Donald Trump, who was just getting started…

Richard Bean adapted the film at The Almeida 15 years ago and it’s back in London because the dodgy delight of observing the con artist at work never gets old. Take Lyle Lanley. He may have been a supporting character in one episode of The Simpsons, but the man who sold a monorail to Springfield is loved for his audacity, wit and showmanship. Oh Conan, what seed did you plant 33 years ago!

We open on Margaret Ford’s psychologist’s office, where trust fund kid, Billy, is being outrageous, even waving a gun around. She’s not fazed by that and we (and Billy) can see the Ivy League ice maiden's veneer of respectability crack just a little - more so when she’s wearing jeans in the next appointment. Billy notes all this, although, at this stage, we don’t know he’s in on the con too.

She treks across Chicago to an Edward Hopperish bar, the eponymous House of Games (super work from designer, Ashley Martin-Davis), with the aim of getting Billy’s gambling debt waived. But the posh professor is fascinated by the witty, charismatic lowlifes she meets there and sees the potential for another bestselling book in their demi-monde of transgression. She takes the bait and the game’s afoot.

At over 100 minutes all-through, this wordy play (that’s the con artist’s weapon of choice after all) could feel like a stretch after a warm London day, but director, Jonathan Kent, keeps the pace high and the twists coming and Bean’s desire to entertain is duly delivered. That’s helped by a fine ensemble cast headed by Lisa Dillon’s slowly unwinding psychologist and Richard Harrington’s amoral charmer, Mike, the leader of the team. There’s fine comic work from Andrew Whipp as the world’s worst bartender, Bobby, and Kelly Price and Laurence Ubong Williams form a fine double act as the marks-not-marks, Trudi and PJ, who guarantee that the fix is in - or so they believe...

It’s a lot of fun, but the question hangs in the air as to whether that’s quite enough in 2025. Bean explains the changes he made from the movie in the programme, but injecting a hit of feelgood dopamine into the last act does blunt the hard edge that Mamet brought to his original. Would it even have happened? Sure we’re told the conman can be conned early on, but I wasn’t buying the resolution and I’m not sure Mike would either.

The bigger issue concerns the ineluctable fact that the play has dated, since 2010 never mind 1987. The globalisation of scamming via the internet has changed its perception from an amusing sideshow for gullible greedy fools into a persistent irritant. I’m continually reminded to be aware of rogue callers from HMRC and I still get the occasional email from a Nigerian prince with currency to convert. The con’s charm has been crushed by its commodification.

Maybe the more problematic element in the dating of the story is captured by the phrase “Post-Truth World”. Many of the skills and planning involved in the long con can be undertaken in a moment with the right technology - so where’s the fun in that? And where’s the streetsmarts in the most powerful man in the world shrugging off allegations concerning the gift of a luxury jet by simply saying, “...[it’s] a very public and transparent transaction.” The whole point of the con is that the mark thinks that they’re running the show, right up to the point when it’s too late to do anything about it. Where’s the delicious seduction in the exercise of naked power?

Maybe that’s another play, but this production, while doing what it says on the tin, misses an opportunity to make a production for these troubled times. It delivers amusement when it could also deliver anger - and, maybe, it should.   

House of Games at Hampstead Theatre until 7 June