★★★

“The cast is uniformly strong, bringing definition to Marber’s testosterone-fuelled ensemble”

Three decades after its debut, Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice returns to the London stage in a muscular revival at the Donmar Warehouse. Mostly set in the sweaty basement of a mediocre restaurant, this brutal portrait of male compulsions and laddish bravado still cuts deep, even as it reminds us just how entrenched and ugly blokey culture was in the mid-90s.

Written before Marber’s later success with Closer, Dealer’s Choice remains arguably his most vivid piece in a canon of hits: a searing, funny, and ultimately hollow study of men addicted not just to gambling, but to delusion.

Director Matthew Dunster’s production taps into the play’s timelessness, capturing the dreams, denials, and desperate self-mythologising that haven’t changed much even as mobile phones have turned from bricks to razor blades.

The cast is uniformly strong, bringing definition to Marber’s testosterone-fuelled ensemble. Daniel Lapaine is chillingly precise as Stephen, the restaurant owner whose demand for control barely masks his own compulsions. His bullying interactions with his son Carl – played with a raw sadness by Kasper Hilton-Hille – form the play’s anguished emotional core, even if their conflict at times feels contrived.

Alfie Allen flutters about as pallid Frankie, the wide-boy waiter whose cocky swagger only thinly veils a deeper frustration. He captures the double purpose of the bantz – as weapon and shield. Theo Barklem-Biggs, meanwhile, is the most impressive of the lot, bringing tightly wound fury to Sweeney, the chef desperate to save face – and some money – for a day out with his daughter.

The late arrival of Brendan Coyle’s Ash, a taciturn force with his own dark motives, shifts the game’s stakes dramatically. Coyle’s performance is an embodiment of seething menace: his mere presence alters the dynamic, exposing the men’s bravado for the fragile veneer it is.

But it is Hammed Animashaun’s turn as Mugsy that lingers longest. Mugsy, the hapless, endlessly optimistic dreamer who hopes to open a restaurant in a disused public lavatory in Bow – not inconceivable these days – is the heart of the play. Animashaun, a blissfully funny actor, manages to balance clownish exuberance with bruised humanity, making Mugsy’s pipe dreams oddly touching. He alone seems fully rounded in a cast of men who appear only to perform for each other.

Dunster’s production leans into the claustrophobia of the setting, with Moi Tran’s set design ingeniously lifting the restaurant’s kitchen and dining room skywards to reveal the grim basement beneath, the card table rotating throughout so we see every face. Some knowledge of poker helps in the occasionally confusing second act.

If the production occasionally overstates the father-son melodrama, and its feral language is jarring, it never loses sight of Marber’s essential insight: that in this world, the biggest gamble isn’t with money but with self-worth. Dealer’s Choice reminds us that laddish culture, for all its swagger, often masks desperation and loneliness. The red flag of the ’90s has become a fully blown crisis in the intervening decades

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK at the Marylebone Theatre

★★★★

“this drama is pure, clean, rich with luxuries, well-engineered and superbly constructed”

In this visceral dissection of modern Judaism, what greets us first is designer Anna Fleischle’s super chic compact kitchen island: clean lines, cream with marble tops.

Plenty of space also to host that massive elephant in the room. But, in keeping with the metaphor, we’ll ignore that till later.

First, we’re expecting a dinner party, some light bantz, kosher nibbles, and plenty of nostalgia as two former best friends Debbie (Caroline Catz) and Shoshana (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) – both excellent – reunite after an uneasy separation. Both are burdened with regrets and simmering resentments.

Debbie’s husband and reluctant co-host Phil (Joshua Malina) is not happy. Debbie has an equivocal relationship with her Jewishness and he fears orthodox Shoshana will lure his wife away from her liberal life in Florida.

Shoshana and Yerucham (unexpected scene stealer Simon Yadoo) live in straitened circumstances in Jerusalem with eight – count ’em – eight children, working for God and the Jewish state. One couple has everything, the other couple feels superior.

At the beginning, on some point of etiquette, Shoshana says, “Your house, your rules. We don’t judge.”

And so follows two hours of brutal, hilarious, heart-rending judging, which goes both ways and escalates. Boy, does it escalate.

The play is based on Nathan Englander’s 2012 New Yorker article and the title refers to a game of trust – who would you ask to hide you away should the Nazis come?

The ridiculously talented Patrick Marber came in on an adaptation and the production carries many of his hallmarks, notably the humour, which is quippy and clever. Every cast member – especially Aaron Sorkin favourite Malina – has great comic sensibilities and they land the punchlines every time.

You’re never more than five minutes away from a doozy. Referring to his wife’s self-lacerating fascination with Jewish suffering, Phil calls the kitchen “a holocaust-themed food court”.

And so to the elephant. As director Marber and Englander were working on the adaptation, October 7 happened, the Hamas atrocity provoking Israel’s scorched earth reaction.

In response, Marber and Englander set up a couple of well-drilled, well-balanced examinations, the Floridians horrified by the slaughter, the Israelis talking about their right to exist.

It is a necessary addition, but uneasy. Throughout the play, the two couples mine their own – often moving – experiences to make their arguments, so a set piece debate about the rights and wrongs of a Middle East war arrives like a gatecrasher.

To introduce more division, we have Debbie and Phil’s slouchy, cynical son Trevor – a sharp cameo by Gabriel Howell. Something of a stoner and activist, his challenging of convention is so great he breaks the fourth wall to keep us in the loop, at one point urging the foursome to see if they can’t get through the next scene without fighting.

His point is perhaps the most telling. While the secular Jews and the Hasidic couple are taking lumps out of each other, indulging in the vanity of small differences, the world is burning. His generation is doomed while the adults in the room do nothing.

“We pray,” says pompous Yerucham, as a counter punch.

Like the kitchen, this drama is pure, clean, rich with luxuries, well-engineered and superbly constructed. Four heavyweights are on good form and take on a difficult theme with deft and precision. Also, did I mention, very, very funny.

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DEALER’S CHOICE

★★★

Donmar Warehouse

DEALER’S CHOICE

Donmar Warehouse

★★★

“The cast is uniformly strong, bringing definition to Marber’s testosterone-fuelled ensemble”

DEALER’S CHOICE

Donmar Warehouse

Reviewed on 29th April 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Helen Murray

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BACKSTROKE | ★★★ | February 2025

NATASHA, PIERRE & THE GREAT COMET OF 1812 | ★★★★★ | December 2024

SKELETON CREW | ★★★★ | July 2024

THE HUMAN BODY | ★★★ | February 2024

LOVE AND OTHER ACTS OF VIOLENCE | ★★★★ | October 2021

DEALER’S CHOICE

DEALER’S CHOICE

DEALER’S CHOICE

🎭 A TOP SHOW IN OCTOBER 2024 🎭

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK

★★★★

Marylebone Theatre

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ANNE FRANK at the Marylebone Theatre

★★★★

“this drama is pure, clean, rich with luxuries, well-engineered and superbly constructed”