Patrick Marber’s “Dealer’s Choice”, in the Romea
Julio Manrique directs this co-production in which six men sit down to a game of poker in which there is more at stake than just the money on the table
Six men, a restaurant and a poker game - with this premise, Julio Manrique returns to the world of British playwright Patrick Marber two years after playing the role of John in After Miss Julie. Written in 1995, Dealer’s Choice is the playwright’s first work and to some degree sums up his own experiences as a gambler.
The play is set in the kitchen and dining room of a restaurant run by Esteve, a divorced former hippie. The other characters include Santi, the chef, who is also divorced and wants to take his daughter to the zoo the following day, having not seen her for three months, Max and Frank, two waiters with very different plans for the future, Carles, Esteve’s son, a gambling addict, and Ash, a mysterious stranger who joins the game which the others play every Sunday in the basement of the restaurant.
Amid whisky and cigarettes, and with no room for bluffs, the six men lay their cards on the table in the form of their relationships, which are built on loyalty, friendship, truth, lies, success and failure – as one of them says, “You must play the man, not the cards”.
Dealer’s Choice was translated and adapted to Catalan by Cristina Genabat (La partida) and co-produced in conjunction with the Grec Festival Barcelona. It stars Ramon Madaula, Joan Carreras, Marc Rodríguez, Andrew Tarbet, Oriol Vila and Andreu Benito and can be seen in the Teatre Romea up until the 3rd of August.