We round up the reviews for this revival of Patrick Marber’s play starring Alfie Allen & Brendan Coyle.
Broadway World: **** “The direction from Matthew Dunster (who has worked with Alfie’s sister Lily on three productions) couldn’t be much tighter as the two-hours-plus running time sprints away.”
The Standard: **** ” 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.”
The Guardian: ** “This is eclipsed by the most special effect of all: Animashaun, an exuberantly geezerish geyser of charm, toweringly tall and quarterback-shouldered but with a dancer’s grace. It is fitting in a play about competitive masculinity that a single performer should emerge victorious, but the contest isn’t even close: this is practically a one-man show. “You’ve lost the plot,” someone tells Mugsy. “I am the plot,” he snaps back. Hear, hear.”
WhatsOnStage: **** “But the revival is beautifully cast and the direction taut. Coyle is devastatingly still as Ash, menacing, amused and strangely sorrowful. The look on his face when someone suggests playing for “fun” is a picture of frozen horror, but also regret. Lapaine is equally subtle as Stephen, a man bound up in restrictive codes which prevent him from showing his clear love for his hopeless son. The understated tragedy of Sweeney, a man who cannot stop himself from gambling, however hard he tries, is beautifully caught by Barklem-Biggs’ slow disintegration and humiliation.”
The Stage: ***** “Compelling, rough-and-tumble revival of Patrick Marber’s tragicomedy about poker-table machismo, compulsion and disappointment.”
The Telegraph: **** “Muscularly revived by Matthew Dunster, Marber’s debut remains a brilliant depiction of lonely little men full of bluster and big dreams.”
The Arts Desk: ***** “An ideal revisiting of Patrick Marber’s play about risking all to move ahead.”
London Theatre.co.uk: **** “An explosively charismatic Hammed Animashaun is the clear standout as the stubbornly optimistic Mugsy, who plans to buy a former public loo on the Mile End Road and turn it into an upscale restaurant. It’s a tour-de-force performance, milking every laugh (his crestfallen face when a grumpy customer demands his Snickers bar perhaps the best), but also forlorn and vulnerable when he pleads for respect.”
Theatre Weekly: **** “Hilton-Hille and Lapaine make the toxic father-son dynamic painfully convincing – full of resentment, hatred and mutual torture, yet unable to leave each other. Allen sharply depicts Frankie’s trivial street wits, while Coyle successfully manoeuvres this endgame figure’s cold ruthlessness with his chilling restraint, always silent and emotionally detached.”
Dealer’s Choice continues to play at the Donmar Warehouse until the 7th June.