Review: POKER FACE, King's Head Theatre, 16 October 2016

Back in their er... bohemian days, Jana had a fling (maybe) with writer Vaclav Havel - she went on to become the best poker player in the world and he went on to be elected first President of the Czech Republic and poster boy for political romantics everywhere. His race is now run and, as his state funeral plays out television, Jana's daughter, Pavlina, is dealing with the impact of an absent father (just as Jana had at the same age) and her preternaturally calm boyfriend, Viktor, an idealist with aspirations to be his generation's Havel. Without doing much, he is disrupting two lives that didn't need much to knock them off the rails.

Petr Kolecko's play has been performed around the world, and it's not hard to see why. Setting a soapy menage a trois against a background of a political dream going sour, and leavening it with sardonic apercus, is always going to attract an audience (one might say, for this LegalAliens Theatre production, an Islington audience) and, at 70 minutes all-through, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

Though the video work is overpowering in imagery and sound in so small a venue (yes, I know Jana's life has been dominated by her father's absence, but still) the three actors give strong performances. Lara Parmiani is purse-lipped and bitter as Jana, spraying cynical bon mots like chips on a table when holding pocket rockets with an ace in the flop.

Daiva Dominyka's Pavlina doesn't know her father's identity (and might question her mother's too, since Dominyka is as tall and rangy as Parmiani is short and slight) but she impresses with her presence, even if her part is disappointingly underwritten in the last 30 minutes. Mark Ota shows his hand early in a playful but untrustworthy tale about an eagle and he manages to retain that edge of the chancer despite his penchant for high-minded speeches. He know he's a wrong 'un, but a charming one for all that.

In the final reckoning, the play falls between a number of stools. It's not funny enough to be a black comedy (even one in the Kafkaesque tradition of not getting any laughs), it's not suspenseful enough to be a thriller, and it's not romantic enough to succeed as a boy-meets-girl. I guess it's not really supposed to be any of those things, but it's not quite the political statement it wants to be either. Perhaps it's just a diverting hour or so in the theatre - and there's nothing wrong with that.

Poker Face continues on Sundays and Mondays at The King's Head Theatre until 31 October.