Hampstead Theatre

Everyone loves a grifter. From Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley to Anna Delvey, we’re suckers for the charming anti-hero, the confidence artist who plays by their own rules. So it’s no surprise that House of Games — David Mamet’s 1987 film, adapted by Richard Bean for the Almeida in 2010 — still exerts a certain pull. Restaged at Hampstead Theatre, Bean’s revival invites us back into an underbelly of sleaze, scams, and high-stakes hijinks. We open in a therapy session between Dr Margaret Ford (Lisa Dillon), a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and Bobby (Oscar Lloyd), an erratic gambler. When he mentions a shadowy place called The House of Games, Margaret follows him there (ethical code be damned) –ostensibly to help, but really because she’s bored and on the hunt for material for her next book. Here’s where you’ll need to suspend your disbelief: after just one visit, she’s in deep –drawn into the orbit of Mike (Richard Harrington), part Al Pacino, part De Niro, who offers her an insider’s view of the con. This crew are less Ocean’s Eleven, more low-rent grifters Dillon plays Ford with a cool restraint. Across her, Harrington’s Mike isn’t quite the smooth talker we might expect (there’s a whole conversation about dinner in between kisses), but he serves the story’s purpose: the man who knows exactly how to spot a crack and wedge himself into it. Mike’s crew are less Ocean’s Eleven, more low-rent grifters. A frail old-timer, a blustering ‘bartender’, and a sleazy gambler round...

US dramatist Sarah Ruhl’s intriguing play does what it says in the title: it’s based on a correspondence between Ruhl and a student of hers named Max, a prodigious young man whose childhood cancer returned some time into their friendship. Big name Blanche McIntyre makes her Hampstead Downstairs debut directing Sirine Saba as Sarah and Eric Sirakian as Max.

The odd random Katie Mitchell show aside, Hampstead Theatre hasn’t really had much in the way of leftwing cool in its programming for ages. Except a couple of years ago lipsync performance artist Dickie Beau’s superb show Re-Member Me – an initally jokey, eventually deeply moving meditation of Hamlet and the actor Ian Charleson – was programmed and proved to be a decent sized hit, bagging an extension and even a post-show Q&A with one Benedict Cumberbatch. And now Beau is back with Showmanism, which is billed as a complete history of theatrical performance, from Ancient Greeks to drag queens. That’s a lot to take in, but reviews from its initial run in Bath suggest it repeats something of the Re-Member Me formula, initially consisting of Beau syncing along to lighthearted interviews with the likes of Ian McKellen and Fiona Shaw, before the whole thing gradually becomes a lot more intense and profound.