Dealer’s Choice Reviews at the Donmar Warehouse

"As brilliant as it is enduring"

"Compelling, rough-and-tumble revival of Patrick Marber’s tragicomedy about poker-table machismo, compulsion and disappointment"

"... there are still easy laughs, but also an irreconcilable murk, where men are stuck deep in ruts, mired in debts and repeating cycles of delusion."

"As a self-confessed gambling addict, Marber knows the territory and the characters inside out. The play is a cri de coeur, skipping back and forth between comedy and tragedy, a portrayal of a world where there are gags aplenty but no winners. It still feels fresh and modern"

"A gripping production of a play that’s as brilliant as it is enduring."

"Savagely comic study of male compulsion"

"Alfie Allen and Brendan Coyle star in this banter-filled play about a high stakes card game"

"Patrick Marber’s 1995 debut play about an all-male poker school in a restaurant basement holds up extremely well as a savagely comic study of compulsion. The first act steadily builds tension while the second makes the arcane rules and rituals of the game’s various permutations feel urgent and captivating. It also reminds you how blokey the culture was three decades ago."

"Matthew Dunster has assembled a crack cast for this polished anniversary revival but Marber’s characters would seem a cold, emptily posturing bunch if it weren’t for Hammed Animashaun’s frankly lovable Mugsy. This hapless, endlessly optimistic fool is — and always was — the heart of the play, and Animashaun’s performance proves once again that he’s funny down to his bones."

"Admittedly, there are some confected crescendos on the way to a fairly obvious climax. Dunster’s production amps up the sturm and drang with musical stings, monolithic projections of the poker variants being played"

"... Animashaun’s Mugsy is a delight from start to finish: charming, hilarious, irrepressible even when slighted."

"30 years on, Patrick Marber’s portrait of male madness still hits home"

"Muscularly revived by Matthew Dunster, Marber’s debut remains a brilliant depiction of lonely little men full of bluster and big dreams"

"Dunster’s muscular production gives full reign to Marber’s blokey banter and apparently off-the-cuff wit."

"All the same, Dunster’s production never quite plays a winning hand. There’s a blunted, on-the-nose quality to it that sometimes stands apart from the play’s steelier heart – this is, after all, a drama that refuses to countenance redemption."

"Yet Brendan Coyle lends a winningly controlled inscrutability to Ash while Hammed Animashaun, a blissfully funny actor, is pure joy as Mugsy"

"Marber’s poker drama still stirs the soul"

"You’re so close to the action that you’re almost tempted to pull up a chair and start shuffling the cards."

"a perfect match for the intimate dimensions of the Donmar Warehouse"

"Hammed Animashaun brings a touch of James Corden to the ebullient outbursts of an eternal loser.... Kasper Hilton-Hille makes the most of the slender figure of Carl."

"Coyle’s body language is extraordinarily eloquent: he may seem a calculating operator on the surface, but his sagging frame and weary glances tell another story. Alfie Allen’s Frankie is all bluster and Jack-the-lad swank; Theo Barklem-Biggs simmers throughout the evening. It may be a reasonably short play, but by the end the players have passed through a dark night of the soul."

"What a blisteringly good play Dealer’s Choice is! A sharply funny, acutely insightful study of male insecurities, of the toxic relationships between fathers and sons, friends and colleagues, of the impulse to gamble a life on the turn of a card."

"Matthew Dunster’s production loads this carefully sculpted structure with perhaps more external weight than it needs... There’s also a revolve as the game progresses, which dissipates rather than builds tension"

"But the revival is beautifully cast and the direction taut. Coyle is devastatingly still as Ash, menacing, amused and strangely sorrowful."

"But it’s Animashaun’s Mugsy who dominates the play, his endless, larger-than-life hopefulness turning a born loser into a beacon of energy."