The cast of Dealer’s Choice
Donmar Warehouse, London
May 2025
Photo by Helen Murray
096 – Dealer’s Choice by Patrick Marber
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The curtain rises on a London restaurant. It is a Sunday evening in 1995, and the restaurant is not yet open for that night’s business. The proprietor and his team are keyed up, not because of the imminent service, but because every Sunday after they close they convene in the basement for their weekly poker game. It is a game where the men – the players are all men – seek to boost their coffers, as well as their relative status and personal prospects. But poker is a cruel mistress, where despite their determined confidence most come away losing more often than they win, and the tenuous hopes that they each nurse of escaping the cycle of disappointment in their lives are battered back again.
This is Patrick Marber’s first play, Dealer’s Choice, which premiered at the National Theatre thirty years ago in February 1995, and was an immediate critical success, winning the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy. Marber went on to write Closer two years later, which we covered on the podcast back in episode 51: Listen here.
As we record this episode a cracking new production of Dealer’s Choice is playing at the Donmar Warehouse here in London, with an outstanding cast directed by Matthew Dunster, and I am delighted and honoured that Matthew joins me to talk about Marber’s play.
Loyal listeners will recall that Matthew appeared in the podcast back in episode 75 when we talked about Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming: Listen here.
Matthew Dunster
Matthew Dunster has written or directed more than 70 shows, including productions at the RSC, the National Theatre, the Royal Exchange Manchester, the Royal Court, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, as well as directing in the West End, on Broadway and internationally. His credits include three of Martin McDonagh’s plays including Hangmen in London and New York, and The Pillowman in the West End. His West End credits also include 2:22 A Ghost Story and Shirley Valentine. Later in 2025 he will direct Conor McPherson’s stage adaptation of The Hunger Games.
Recommended Play
Matthew recommended This Wide Night by Chloe Moss.
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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