For a game that's been around for a couple of centuries, poker is hot.

The World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and "Celebrity Poker" are pulling down increasingly respectable ratings on TV, Internet poker is booming and, if my spying on the L can be trusted, video poker is fast becoming a major diversion for Chicago rail commuters.

Which is why "Dealer's Choice" -- Steep Theatre Company's modest, flawed but ultimately endearing production of Patrick Marber's comedy-drama featuring a high-stakes poker game -- can be said to surf the zeitgeist. Mostly well-directed by G.J. Cederquist, "Dealer's Choice" captures both the exhilaration of the game and its dark seductiveness to compulsive gamblers.

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If it were only about the game itself, rather than the sneaky way poker brings out the darkness and, occasionally, the compassion of its players, "Dealer's Choice" (by the author of the recent Broadway hit "Closer") wouldn't be much worth seeing. As it is, Marber manages to exploit the game's possibilities as a crackling plot device, a source of jazz-improv dialogue and, best of all, a more-than-serviceable vehicle for the revelation of character.

Make that characters, in the eccentric sense of the term. "Dealer's Choice" is set in a white-tablecloth London restaurant where the owner, Stephen, holds a weekly late-night poker game with his twentysomething son Carl and his staff -- volatile chef Sweeney and a pair of waiters, ladies-man Frankie and lovable dimwit Mugsy. Joining them is a fellow by the sinister, Pinteresque name of Ash who has bankrolled Carl's heavy casino-gambling losses and has come to collect.

Marber's real concern is the emotional nexus between Stephen and Carl, who are locked in one of those father-son love-hate things, and Mugsy, who, for all his pea-brained antics, has a sweetness and an honesty that triggers Stephen's affection and Carl's jealousy.

The production values here are of the shoestring variety and, particularly in the first act, the acting style is forced and the working-class British accents simultaneously imprecise and overdone. The opening-night performance was marred, early on, by an oddly stilted pace, screwed-up lighting cues and one sadly ineffective performance -- by Peter Moore, who captures little of Ash's edgy and, dramatically speaking, much-needed menace.

After intermission, though, the characters settle into their game and the production itself settles into a natural and rather lovely groove. Richly intuitive work gets done by Jim Poole and John Luzar as Stephen and Carl, respectively, and especially by Alex Gillmor, whose strangely heartfelt clowning gives Mugsy a kind of Beckettian grandeur; he's as heartbreaking as he is absurd.

In the end, you come away feeling you've seen some real theater by a boyish, scrappy, hardworking ensemble that isn't bluffing. It's not always pretty, but "Dealer's Choice" is worth the gamble.

Source: Kevin Nance, Chicago Sun-Times