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vikyavorsk

Kris' Books.

Female. Slavic mind. Avid reader.

 I read across a broad range of book genres, with an emphasis on Aus/NZ lit, Russian and Ukrainian literature, Latin-American literature and European history.

 

Dealer's Choice - Patrick Marber Judging by the era in which the drama was written, I had half-expected the play to be an in-your-face Sarah Kane exemplar. It was not as such. The dialogue between the characters impressed me as quite sparse, but not stiff. The language was colloquial, the type you'd expect from the characters involved, but not meant to shock. I was not unfamiliar with the main theme, which concerned addiction to poker and its consequences. It reminded me of Nikolai Gogol's play 'Gamblers'(Игроки), however not as well developed. In that play, the protagonist said "The point of life is to deceive everyone so well they will not suspect they were deceived" close to the end of the play, only to realise he had been deceived as no one else had allowed themselves to be deceived. In this play, everyone seemed to want to deceive themselves as well as others. Only for poker, not really for winnings as in Gogol's play. There seemed to be many threads running through the play, but they were not connected directly, leaving plenty of room for imagination and interpretation. I would have enjoyed the play much more if it were more developed in terms of themes and structure, however I think the character development was well done.