Five compulsive gamblers – a down-market restauranteur, his son, his chef and two waiters – play poker in the basement each week. They are joined by a professional gambler, who is (unbeknown to them) determined to get back a large sum of money the son owes him.
It is not necessary to know anything about poker to enjoy Patrick Marber’s play, a modern classic, first seen at the National Theatre thirty years ago. The dialogue is sharp and witty. Matthew Dunster directs an excellent ensemble at a very fast pace. The production takes its energy and its appeal from the rat-a-tat delivery of the lines.
Daniel Lapaine is the restauranteur who keeps getting his son (Kasper Hilton-Hille) out of trouble and proves more sympathetic than you might expect. Brendan Coyle is the professional gambler, a menacing figure.
Theo Barklem-Biggs is the chef. He doesn’t want to gamble the money he has carefully saved to take his young daughter to the zoo. Alfie Allen is the waiter who wants to leave Britain and become a professional gambler in America.
Hammed Animashaun, who was a very funny Bottom in a recent A Midsummer Night’s Dream, gives a big and immensely likeable performance. He is hilarious as Mugsy, the head waiter, a buffoon, who dreams of converting a lavatory in the Mile End Road into a restaurant. “I am a good loser!” he cries.
Marber knows his subject well. In his younger days he was a poker-addict and his father had to bail him out. The lesson, he learned, is simple: play the man, not the cards.
P.S. If you are sitting at a poker table and you don’t know who the mug is, then it’s you.
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