“House of Games” at Hampstead Theatre
Neil Dowden in North London
14 May 2025
Already a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and successful screenwriter, David Mamet made a dazzling film debut as writer/director with House of Games in 1987. A neo-noir thriller about a female psychiatrist lured into the seedy world of con men in Chicago, it combines a tortuous, suspenseful story with characteristically quick-fire dialogue. Richard Bean adapted it for the theatre at the Almeida in 2010 near the start of the growing trend of reversing the previous tradition by converting from screen to stage. At the time, it seemed unnecessary to re-work what was a slick movie, though Bean points out the film’s innate theatricality because everyone is role-playing in a game of pretence and deception. Now, the play has been revived at Hampstead Theatre in an effective rather than exciting production by Jonathan Kent that doesn’t quite con us into believing it all.
Set by Ashley Martin-Davis.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
In fact, the most disorientating moment of the show comes with a brilliant sleight of hand right at the start. We are looking expectantly at a murkily lit basement bar with a card table, while a “House of Games” red neon sign in the window casts a silhouette on the wooden-planked stage. Then it suddenly goes dark and the lights come on brightly upstairs in a hitherto unseen psychiatric consulting room, complete with desk, chairs, and bookshelves. Ashley Martin-Davis’s clever split-level design, enhanced by Peter Mumford’s lighting switches, embodies the contrast of above-board professionalism with dark subconscious desires, as the action alternates between the two locations.
Harvard-educated psychiatrist Margaret has recently published a best-selling book about compulsion when an opportunity arises for a follow-up via one of her clients. Billy tells her he owes big gambling debts and threatens to blow his brains out in front of her. She persuades him to give her the gun and promises to visit the notorious House of Games bar to negotiate with the creditor, Mike. Mike takes a shine to her and agrees to waive Billy’s debt if she helps him to win a poker game by identifying a rival’s “tell” – the behaviour that gives away what kind of hand they have. It doesn’t go according to plan.
Lisa Dillon and Richard Harrington.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
Margaret realizes she has become entangled with a gang of grifters – but it turns her on. Seduced by Mike, she is fascinated with how confidence tricks are sprung in this entrepreneurial underworld and wants to research a psychosocial book about this form of illicit American capitalism. But when she accompanies them on one of their scams things spiral out of control as violence erupts and the Mafia become involved. It’s a fast-moving, intriguing story of double-crossing and betrayal, where nothing is what it seems and no one can be trusted. With people living on their wits, who will come out on top?
Though the original screenplay crackles with trademark rat-a-tat humour (some of which Bean uses verbatim), Mamet’s film is much more thrilling than the play which leans more into comedy, and some of it quite broad as is Bean’s wont. And the changed ending here in particular softens the film’s hard-boiled quality. Always intended as an entertainment, nonetheless there needs to be more edginess for it to work fully – there is a lack of a genuine sense of danger and also sexual tension between Margaret and Mike. Knowing the plot twists in the film wouldn’t matter too much if we felt more urgently the way Margaret is sucked into this sleazy milieu. While Kent’s staging is diverting enough, it feels a bit pedestrian compared with the film.
Lisa Dillon conveys Margaret’s cool academic observation – which may be akin to voyeurism – and just as her clothing becomes more casual her changing body language suggests a newfound assertiveness, but there isn’t a real feeling of transgression in what she does. And there isn’t much spark in her mutual attraction to the shyster Mike with Richard Harrington’s rather anodyne portrayal of a smooth operator being too soft-edged. The other dodgy dealers are colourfully played by Oscar Lloyd as the provocative livewire Billy, Andrew Whipp as an incompetent Hell’s Angel barman, Siôn Tudor Owen as a loudmouthed, bragging poker player, and Robin Soans as a dapper gentleman crook – all adept at putting on an act when the game is on.
