Chic Today will brave battles to catch a bit of culture. Even when the adversary is a 100mph wind.
The trouble is, victory so often offers up disappointing spoils.

Not last night. ‘Dealer’s Choice’ was the best introduction to a Monday evening I have had for a long, long time – even if the fact that half the audience were wearing wellies was slightly distracting at first.

I know I’m a bit late in the game to be saying this (the play has been on at The Trafalgar Studios since December 2007), but what a mesmerising production. With top-class performances and a five-star script on the table, the stakes were always going to be set high for Patrick Marber’s 1995 play.
Ostensibly about an after-hours poker game between staff at the restaurant where they work, Marber manages to make the hopeless aspects of the character’s lives brim with humour amongst the bolshy banter of the kitchen and the poker-venue basement.

The outstanding cast make the script shine yet the underlying darkness that deals with obsession and control is what really draws you into more than just their expensive card game.

Malcolm Sinclair plays the restaurant owner and the poker-organiser and he does it with a flourish. Thoroughly captivating throughout, his upper-class accent and apparent propriety creates an excellent dramatic atmosphere when coupled with the cockney, lads-magazine behaviour of his co-stars, Ross Boatman and Jay Simpson.

The ever-enthusiastic, sometimes childish and often touching performance of Stephen Wight as Mugsy, a waiter who dreams of opening a restaurant in a public toilet on the Mile End Road with his poker winnings, adds an exquisite energy to the play.

Seeing Roger Lloyd Pack (Trigger from Only Fools and Horses) on stage was alone almost worth the ticket-price. His character introduces the reality of the consequences obsession can have on our lives and some of his one-liners will surely become classics.

I went to this play with a few girlfriends and I found it fascinating that we were all so enjoying a play that was about men and their poker. There were few references to women throughout, but plenty of poker-talk (ie. a foreign language to us). One of my friends pointed out that perhaps we liked it because the blatant lack of women in these men’s lives accentuated how much they needed a civilising female presence to avoid ending up in the depressing state they were now in. I just think we liked it because it was a really good play.

‘ Dealer’s Choice’ is on at The Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, London SW1 until 29 March. Call 0870 060 6632 for tickets or go to www.dealerschoicetheplay.com for more info.

To find out all the post-theatre dramatics me and my mates got up to, go to ‘My Music-Massive Monday’ at http://www.chictoday.com/2008/03/12/my-music-massive-monday/