Director Sam West was part of the weekly poker school that inspired Patrick Marber's 1995 play, and he plays his cards brilliantly in this deviously controlled and painfully funny revival. It would, however, be a mistake to see this simply as a drama about poker, even as it tells of the staff of a London restaurant who play a weekly game organised by the owner, Stephen, a man who likes to be in control.
For a few hours, the smell of sweat, fear and testosterone mingles as the staff, joined by Stephen's loser of a son, Carl, banter, needle and deal the dream that is attached to every card. It is as if every card that is turned promises redemption, a new beginning. The dreams, of course, are dashed: optimist Mugsy will never open his own restaurant in a disused public lavatory, Carl will never take responsibility, Frankie will fail as a poker pro, and chef Sweeney will always blow the £50 he was saving to take his daughter to the zoo. On this particular night, the introduction of a stranger, Ash, into the game ratchets up the stakes. You must play the man, not the cards, is the mantra that the characters fail to heed, just as they fail to understand their own self-destructive impulses.
This is not a glimpse into the closed world of poker, it is a look into the closed world of men, defined by the absence of civilising women in their lives, men whose bluffs disguise that they are all losers, failing parents and lost sons. There are sharply defined performances all round, and Malcolm Sinclair is compulsively watchable as Stephen, a man whose stone face suddenly crumbles when hit by a landslide of fatherly hurt.
· Until March 29. Box office: 0870 060 6632.
