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Drama spotlights six characters in search of life's meaning

By Hope Green

Once a compulsive gambler, Patrick Marber wrote his first successful play in 1995 when he shut himself inside a London theater for three weeks with a pack of cards. The result was Dealer's Choice, a drama where six men reveal their true nature over a game of poker.

	Poker becomes more than a game for (left to right) Rod Brady (CFA'03) as Frankie, Paul Cortez (CFA'03) as Carl, and Andrew Sneed (CFA'03) as Mugsy. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

An undergraduate cast and crew from the CFA school of theatre arts will stage Marber's work next week in four performances at the college's Studio 104.

"I was looking for something the students could really sink their teeth into in terms of characters and their relationships and human values," says director Douglas Mercer (CFA'04), who is in the graduate directing program at CFA. "Dealer's Choice is a very realistic piece about character."

The play is set in the basement of a London restaurant, where the owner, Stephen, along with his son, two waiters, and a cook play high-stakes poker every Sunday night. Carl, the owner's prep-school educated son, has been frequenting a casino for the past year and owes 4,000 pounds to a professional cardsharp named Ash.

When Ash shows up at the restaurant with threats on Carl's life, the younger man gets Ash to pose as one of his former teachers and join the local game. Carl figures Ash will clean up and win back the debt money.

Tensions between Carl and his father and strains in his relationship with Ash, a man in his fifties whom Carl views as a second, but more fearsome, paternal figure, reach their highest point in the card game. Subplots concern the frustrated dreams of the other men. Sweeney, the divorced cook, tries to resist playing cards so he can spend more time with his small daughter. One waiter, Frankie, hopes to win big at poker and use the money to move to Las Vegas. The other waiter, Mugsy, who provides much of the play's comic relief, is determined to open a restaurant in a former public lavatory, an idea whose absurdity is lost on him.

"All of the characters in one way or another have their compulsions," Mercer says. "They are compulsive about poker and compulsive about life. So the poker game becomes a huge metaphor for life and taking risks -- when to fold, when to pass, when to play, and how to bluff and read one another. All that chemistry comes to life throughout the play."

To prepare the six male actors for the poker scenes, Mercer spent a week teaching them the game. "Each character has his own style of playing," says Paul Cortez (CFA'03), who plays Carl, "and those styles are reflected in their interactions with other characters when they're not at the poker table. For instance, Carl is always owing people, but he never really quite wins, and in the same way he is always having to pay his dad back emotionally or needing to heal the relationship."

Marber, a former stand-up comedian and a scriptwriter for the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral, has been recognized for his economical use of language. That's important, since the action in Dealer's Choice is primarily a bunch of men sitting around a card table talking.

"His writing is very tight and focused," says Michael Cohen (CFA'03), who plays the role of Ash. "When somebody says something, it serves the plot well. So the play has a really great momentum, almost like a snap to it. That's why Doug chose to keep the original British dialogue. It's so much written in a British mind that you have to keep that accent in order to maintain the momentum and rhythm of the piece."

While poker as a metaphor for life is hardly a new idea, Mercer says, Dealer's Choice avoids the realm of cliché. "Marber once said that it's impossible to have an honest relationship with anyone else, and the only thing we can hope for is an honest relationship with ourselves," he says. "So I think in the grander scheme of things, this play is about a quest for that relationship with yourself. It's something I'm on a journey toward, and I think we all are. And that was the major aspect that attracted me to this play."

The College of Fine Arts school of theatre arts will present Patrick Marber's Dealer's Choice, directed by Douglas Mercer, Thursday, October 10, through Sunday, October 13, in CFA Studio 104, 855 Commonwealth Ave. Admission is free and open to the public. For information, call 353-3349.

4 October 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations