John Morrison

Dealer's Choice

I missed Patrick Marber's 1990s classic play about an all-male poker school the first time round but I was thrilled by this revival in the intimate space of the Menier Chocolate Factory.  From where I was sitting I could have reached out and stirred Roger Lloyd Pack's coffee on stage.  Never having played poker and having a phobia about card games of all kinds, I wasn't sure whether the subject matter would leave me cold or just be incomprehensible.  But I needn't have worried.  In Samuel West's direction, the play comes up fresh as a daisy and confirms my view that Patrick Marber is a playwright of huge talent, though he hasn't written a real masterpiece - yet.  As studies of intimate relationships, Dealer's Choice and Closer make great theatre.  I couldn't come to terms with Howard Katz, Marber's next play for the National Theatre, but his After Miss Julie, a reworking of Strindberg at the Donmar, was electrifying stuff.  Don Juan in Soho (after Moliere) at the same theatre wasn't quite so successful.  What's good about Dealer's Choice is that unlike so many plays, it's not bogged down by excessive backstory or offstage events.  The interesting stuff all happens on stage, and though all the characters have some kind of past history, these elements never overshadow the action.  The six male characters are finely drawn, their dialogue sizzles and the words they throw at each other ARE the action, not just a comment on it.  Wonderful writing.  I particularly liked the performances of Stephen Wight (who played Don Juan's sidekick at the Donmar) as the moronic waiter Mugsy and Samuel Barnett (ex-History Boys) as Carl the restaurant proprietor's gambling-addicted son.  Fine performances also from Malcolm Sinclair as Stephen, the proprietor, Ross Boatman as Sweeney the chef and Jay Simpson as Frankie the cocky waiter.  Roger Lloyd Pack is equally impressive as the outsider Ash, the professional gambler who coolly takes the others to the cleaners.  This play's transferring to the Trafalgar Studios.  The Menier is a great venue and the two-course menu is great value at £12 if you're seeing the show and buy an all-in ticket.  The only blemish on the evening was the fact that almost nobody got a programme because they had run out -- presumably somebody had failed to reorder.

This week I was pouring drinks

Not the title of a new play, just an explanation of my lack of postings for the last three weeks.  I've been busy with the Sevenoaks Literary Celebration, on holiday in the West Country, and running the bar and taking photographs for the Stag Theatre Company production of A Chorus Line.  Back to normal theatregoing as soon as possible, I hope. Meanwhile...

Othello at the Donmar with Kelly Reilly, Ewen Macgregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor is probably the hottest ticket of the year and I don't have one. I had October 15 marked in my diary as the day to go online and buy, but technology defeated me.  The ATG website didn't exactly crash, though it was extremely slow, but I found a problem with Javascript.  Each time I got as far as selecting a seat, the seating plan failed to load. This happened with my laptop and my desktop, using two different browsers and after downloading a new version of Javascript.  No luck despite 90 minutes of trying.  By Tuesday all the tickets for the run were sold.  Did anyone else have this problem?  Perhaps only people with Mackintosh got tickets?  Perish the thought.  Anyway, if you have a spare ticket or two for this show, pass it on to me.

Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph is normally quite a kindhearted critic and when he likes a show, he comes up with the sort of quotable quote that theatre managements love to put on their billboards. He was the one who coined the phrase 'pure theatrical Viagra' after Nicole Kidman bared all on stage at the Donmar. But when he doesn't like something he really puts the boot in, as he did this week in a review of Kebab at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, calling 'a pile of rancid cliches'.  In the Guardian Michael Billington clearly didn't like it either but was more restrained in his comments.

Rasputin and the National Theatre

My playwriting group in London Player-Playwrights hosted an excellent talk last night by Chris Campbell, deputy head of the literary department at the National Theatre.  It was refreshing to hear how much effort they put into reading the 1500 or so unsolicited scripts they get every year. 'We're like a whaling factory ship, sucking up absolutely everything,' he told us.  About 90 per cent are read in full -- which makes a nice contrast to the BBC, who seem to rely on reading synopses and treatments in stage one of their commissioning rounds for radio drama. The BBC is looking for writers it can use on its existing shows, at least for TV, and the National is looking for plays to put on  -- which may sound a fairly meaningless distinction, but it isn't.  Chris took us through the kind of plays that are suited to the Cottesloe, the Lyttelton and the Olivier stages.  Plays for the Olivier have to put bums on the theatre's 1100 seats, but don't necessarily have to have enormous casts.  They have to have big parts that will fill the theatre -- perhaps The Emperor Jones would be a good recent example of a play with a small cast but a huge central role.  Other advice from Chris:  the National isn't much interested in one-act plays or musicals (not at the moment, anyway) and is looking for plays that have something important to say.  Don't write lengthy covering letters with your scripts -- they are more likely to do harm than good. Sometimes plays get passed on to other smaller theatres on the fringe who often ring up and ask if the National has any good plays that aren't quite right for its three stages or don't fit its programming.  I was interested to hear that Chris played a large part in getting Clare Bayley's interesting revival of The Enchantment staged in the Cottesloe.  I think we continue to disagree about the relative merits of Andrew Upton's version of Philistines and Gorky's original text, but no matter.  Since Nick Hytner took over, the National's collective eye for a good play has improved a lot;  Richard Eyre sometimes struggled to fill the Olivier with the right plays and Trevor Nunn, while a star in so many ways,  wasn't a great judge of new writing. One further tip from Chris for aspiring playwrights hoping to improve their chances: avoid plays about Rasputin.  There's one nameless author who has sent in 13 plays about the mad monk in the last 10 years and the team aren't reading any more!