For a game
that's been around for a couple of centuries, poker is
hot. The World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and
"Celebrity Poker" are pulling down increasingly
respectable ratings on TV, Internet poker is booming
and, if my spying on the L can be trusted, video poker
is fast becoming a major diversion for Chicago rail
commuters.
Which is why "Dealer's
Choice" -- Steep Theatre Company's modest, flawed but
ultimately endearing production of Patrick Marber's
comedy-drama featuring a high-stakes
Texas Holdem
poker game -- can be said to surf the zeitgeist. Mostly
well-directed by G.J. Cederquist, "Dealer's Choice"
captures both the exhilaration of the game and its dark
seductiveness to compulsive gamblers.
If it were only about the
game itself, rather than the sneaky way Texas Holdem
poker brings out the darkness and, occasionally, the
compassion of its players, "Dealer's Choice" (by the
author of the recent Broadway hit "Closer") wouldn't be
much worth seeing. As it is, Marber manages to exploit
the game's possibilities as a crackling plot device, a
source of jazz-improv dialogue and, best of all, a
more-than-serviceable vehicle for the revelation of
character.
Make that characters, in the
eccentric sense of the term. "Dealer's Choice" is set in
a white-tablecloth London restaurant where the owner,
Stephen, holds a weekly late-night poker game with his
twentysomething son Carl and his staff -- volatile chef
Sweeney and a pair of waiters, ladies-man Frankie and
lovable dimwit Mugsy. Joining them is a fellow by the
sinister, Pinteresque name of Ash who has bankrolled
Carl's heavy casino-gambling losses and has come to
collect.
Marber's real concern is the
emotional nexus between Stephen and Carl, who are locked
in one of those father-son love-hate things, and Mugsy,
who, for all his pea-brained antics, has a sweetness and
an honesty that triggers Stephen's affection and Carl's
jealousy.
The production values here
are of the shoestring variety and, particularly in the
first act, the acting style is forced and the
working-class British accents simultaneously imprecise
and overdone. The opening-night performance was marred,
early on, by an oddly stilted pace, screwed-up lighting
cues and one sadly ineffective performance -- by Peter
Moore, who captures little of Ash's edgy and,
dramatically speaking, much-needed menace.
After intermission, though,
the characters settle into their game and the production
itself settles into a natural and rather lovely groove.
Richly intuitive work gets done by Jim Poole and John
Luzar as Stephen and Carl, respectively, and especially
by Alex Gillmor, whose strangely heartfelt clowning
gives Mugsy a kind of Beckettian grandeur; he's as
heartbreaking as he is absurd.
In the end, you come away
feeling you've seen some real theater by a boyish,
scrappy, hardworking ensemble that isn't bluffing. It's
not always pretty, but "Dealer's Choice" is worth the
gamble.
