The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 85

13 THE WEEK IN REVIEWS xHe was an over-keen gambler as an undergraduate and joined Gamblers Anonymous when he was 23' "i Observe' Review lc jne 1998 rr 'tW' ijfe yi 'trp -r- EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL The Fringe starts on 9 August, one week before the Internationa! Festival. The programme was launched this week. There is a record 1,309 shows including the European debut of Sam Shepard's Shaved Spirts and the world premiere of Louis de Bemieres'sLettertoa Daughter. Visit the Fringe on the Net (www.go-edinburgh. co.uk) or book tickets from 22 June on 0131-2265138 Mamet.

(Marber and Mamet are both skilful gamblers.) Then came the extraordinarily successful Closer a cynical passion play in which Marber found his own voice, writing dialogue of witty distinction. Now Marber is directing three short, secretive plays by Mamet, grouped under the title The Old Neighborhood, opening at the Royal Court at the Duke of York's from 17 June (with Zoe Wanamaker, Diana Quick and Colin Stinton in the cast). In the first play, The Disappearance of the Jews, Mamet 's dialogue is artfully slight, the dialogue between two old men who have known each other all their lives. The old friends do not need to fill in any gaps. Marber would say, on Mamet's behalf, that there are no gaps to fill.

He explains, with satisfaction, that in Mamet's work there is 'no subtext, only what is said and done'. He adds: 'Mamet would possibly argue that there is no character, journey or relationship in his work. All that actors have to do is speak the lines and make sure they don't bump into the But the trouble with this, as Marber admits, is that actors often want subtext. And so do audiences. And as a director, especially with the last play, Marber has had to 'invent, impose, suggest, cajole, wheedle something out of the words'.

Mamet's view amounts to a serious tease, a way of not having to be his own critic. I look at Patrick Marber and silently try out Mamet's idea on him, try to judge him only on the evidence of what is in front of me. We are sitting in a cheerless office at the top of the Old Vic, surrounded by fat blue files, with Peter Hall Company labels on their spines. Marber has politely offered me a choice of defeated-looking chairs, suggesting I take the swivel one for its greater mobility. Marber looks comfortable.

He is short, dark, handsome and well-fed (not a euphemism for fat). His blue and white check shirt and black suit suit him, but are as unforthcomihg as uniform. There is a laziness about the way that he sits and his slightly crooked smile has indolent charm. His blue eyes look as though they might give his game away but he has got his words on a lead. He often has a dog (a white West Highland terrier called Mrs Riley) on a lead too.

But she is reported to be suffering from arthritis and at home in Marber's flat in Smithfield, Marber has been described as arrogant and shy by turns, friendly and a depressive. But it is the exceptional person who does not consider themselves, on some level, shy. Mar ber doesn't quite pass the test. He was a stand-up comic for four years (before co-writing the Alan Partridge Knowing Me, Knowing You series) and though he hated it, stuck it out. Today he seems confident, buttressed by the reception of Closer, which has been recast with Imogen Stubbs, Tom Mannion, Kate Ashfield and Lloyd Owen.

It will also go to Broadway in the winter. Has the success of Closer had a paralysing effect on his writing? 'No. It is much easier to write your next play if your last play has been a hit. Confidence is He is not writing but thinking' about a new play: 'It is in deep cover, below the tell him my impression of him is of someone who does not worry unduly. Is this right? 'No! I am a classic worrier: I'm a worrier who knows he shouldn't worry because what's the My impression is also that he has an engaged intelligence.

He is quick to detect the bogus. He was an over-keen gambler as an undergraduate at Oxford (he joined Gamblers Anonymous when he was 23). Did he see his creative life as a gamble? he said, not tempted to deliver a pat answer. Has Marber ever met Mamet? 'I took a stroll with Mr Mamet. We were in Soho so we discussed They tried and failed to buy Mamet a leather jacket.

'He tried one on; he didn't like They talked about why Jews they are both Jewish generally don't drink and why writers often do. Later, Marber says, they talked about oblivion. Marber is in favour of having 'one or two' drinks when writing: 'It takes a little bit of yourself off He says later there can be a 'strange magical feeling when you write. Especially when you don't quite know what you're doing -that's when it is Marber, who has a younger brother, was born in Wimbledon. His father worked in the city.

His mother was a housewife. He describes himself as a 'lapsed' Jew, though he still has 'a strong cultural attachment' This makes him feel relatively 'sure-footed' with Mamet. Marber has other people's work before Craig Raine's 1953 for example as well as his own. Doe he find it a relief to direct someone else's play? Tt is equally demanding, but in a different way. It is pleasurable not to know how it should But he worries about making 'a pig's ear' of someone else's work.

Marber looks forward to directing Closer in New York and marvels at how serious showbiz is over there. As an ironic Englishman, is he able to take this seriously? 'It is my life's project to throw away my bags of he says. apotheosis. When they're together the one winsome but spiky, the other pratf ailing behind a park bench their big-heartedness fills the stage; when they consummate their romance with a much-postponed kiss, it lasts as long as it has been long-awaited. It's not all laughs: the production over-insists on the dullness of the 'shallow fools' whose dim-witted investigations save the day.

Act Two emerges as a downbeat affair: I've never seen so clearly the extent to which, in a reversal of the axiom, Much Ado repeats as tragedy in its second half what it introduces as farce in its first. In a terrific scene before the interval, the iovestruck Benedick, apprehended by his friends, denies being smitten while hiding a bouquet of flowers behind his back. When next the three assemble, the scene finds its mirror image, only this time Benedick's burden is a less happy one: he bears a white glove; he's come to challenge Claudio. Ormerod's design dappled lights on gauze keeps it elegantly simple; the production is scored buoyantly too, by Paddy Cunneen. With this typically ivacious spin on Shake-speare, one of Britain's two most distinguished companies in the last two decades is sign-mg off in style.

Cheek by Jowl's retirement has set everyone wondering who'll be the trail-blazers of tomorrow. Of the few obvious candidates, Fd say Tim Supple' Young Vic ensemble are as good a bet as any. They're far from being the finished article, and the two productions in their new repertory season are flawed. But the company's earthily open spirit, and the sense that they're teasing away at what's fundamental to theatre, makes them exciting to be around. Both productions take a lot of getting used to.

Their Twelfth Night is a ponderous one, more inclined to brood than belch. Supple gives it the treatment that served his own Comedy of Errors so well, locating in the infatuations and identity confusion upon which Shakespeare's comedy hinges: not merriment, but mysticism; the inexplicable, the dreamlike and dark. Sometimes that works against Twelfth Nights grain; and the too-melancholy songs of Dan Milne's Feste can labour the point. Sometimes, it's surprising far from the usual carouser, Christopher Saul' Sir Toby looks like a sad old academic, twisted by boredom or loneliness into manipulating others for hiskicks. Two performances especially distinguish the production.

Robert Bowman's Malvo-lio is a study in starchy self-possession. He preens and bris-tles tiiiily and eloquently; Patrick Matter. Photograph Dod Miller exhaustively expressed notion that Wales is in the thrall of fairies try announcing that at the Arms Park never really convince. Susannah Clapp is on holiday Interview Supple hews Yoknapataw-pha county from spit and sawdust; this is a company who wear muck as abadge of pride. It's a gung-ho staging, where water jets recreate turbulent floods and a burning barn goes up not in flames but in fireworks.

Like Faulkner, though, its biggest impressions are made with little details: the youngest son, Vardaman, drilling airholes through his mother's coffin and into her face; the family plastering Cash's gangrenous leg in cement. Adrian Lee's music wails, crashes and twangs atmospherically as the clan's flamboyant dysfunction unfolds. Of course, there's no denser prose than Faulkner's, and none that wrestles more with abstraction: describing the thought processes that lead a child to think of his mother as a fish represents a challenge to the theatrical adaptor. Edward Kemp has insufficient faih in the staging and could cut loose from the narration more often: we don't need to see and be told. So Supple's version stubbornly remains a novel, even if -thanks again to Bowman as a mousy Cash, Jayasundera's Dewy Dell, an overgrown child gawkily ignorant of her own innocence, and Leo Wringer's Vernon Tull, who strikes the right note of compliant incredulity it's a thoroughly watchable one.

Ed Thomas and his company, the Fiction Factory, bring to the Royal Court a play Gas Station Angel not dissimilar to his House of America, in that its heroes Bron and Ace try to dream themselves out of the Welsh doldrums. There's an intricate tale of family disharmony woven into the romance, which should be more involving than it is. But its characters deflect engagement: they're so lucid, they deny the drama anything to reveal. Thomas gives his overwritten play a high-pitched over-production, which shouts a lot, and contrives to fudge its own climaxes. Its argument that blood relationships are enchanted, meanwhile, and its then, when reading Olivia's supposed love-note, he announces 'I am as if the very idea bewilders him, the guard comes down, and it's momentarily heartbreaking.

And Thusitha Jayasundera's Viola morphs into a breezily masculine Cesario, capturing in an unstagey turn not just the teenage boy's cockiness but his swagger-and-slouch physicalitytoo. William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, the story of a family wagon-riding across the Deep South to bury their mother, plays to the company's ensemble strengths. As in the novel, everyone gets a chance to hold the narrative reins; the truth is revealed where perspectives overlap. It's a device that makes the opening minutes uncommonly fragmentary; the Mississippi-like meandering of one or two accents only adds to the alienation. But by the time the Bundrens, ever further from home, close ranks, the cast too pull together in an intimate, unsentimental evocation of family, stoicism and blind faith.

Patrick Marber by Kate KeUaway 'You give actors lines to deliver, but what they really love is subtext' There's a particular cruelty in someone who lives by having a quick tongue losing part of that tongue to cancer7 Matt Seaton reviews John Diamond, Books, page 15 Patrick Marber has always been a champion of David Mamet. Marber's first play, Dealer's Choice, about gambling, established him as a writer to be reckoned with, though some critics regarded the play as derivative of Miguel IHescas (Black to move) Chess But this slugfest was far too good to miss. I've just got room for the critical phase. Alexei Shirov (Black) by Jon Speelman when the king holds the trick, both players are aware who has the ace. He played the eight of hearts to show an even number of hearts, and Jason continued With a second round of hearts, knowing declarer still had a heart left, to beat the contract in straightforward fashion.

position at Trick One, when his partner followed with the eight of spades under his lead of the king. He also switched to a heart, but foreseeing the problems that his partner might have, he played the king. Justin, of course, did not have to signal attitude on this trick; Bp5; or 25 Qf2 exf3 26Kd2 Bxf2 27Nxf2 Re2 28 Kc3fxg2 wins. 26 fxe4 Rxe4 Not only does Black already have two pawns for the exchange and the two bishops against a scrawny knight in an open position: but the discoordinated white position promises further pickings. 27 Kc2 Rg4 28 Rd2 Be7 29 Rgl Kg7 30 Nf2 Rf4 31 Nd3 Re4 32 Rgdl Bb5 33 a4 Bc6 34 Rel? Losing the pawn and with it the match.

35 Nxel Bb4 36 Re2 Bxel 37 Rxel Bxg2 The rest was simple: 38 Kd2 h4 39 Ke3 Bd5 40 b4 h3 41 Re2 f5 42 Rd2 Be4 43 Kf4 Bg2 44 Rd7 Kf6 45 Rh7 g5 46 Kg3f447Kg4Ke548b5 Black can now win either by removing White 's queenside pawns or marching his king either to gl. So Kramnik resigned. Gerald Tredinnick have also represented Britain at the very top level. In fact, this week's hand comes from the World Junior Championship in Bali in 1995, in which the Hacketts spearheaded the outstanding British performance they won the final against New Zealand very comfortably. Dealer South E-Wgame A 7 5.4 3 9743 A6 AK9 4k KQ962 A A 8 VKJ10 VA865 2 10 8 3 Q7654 A 10 VQ2 KJ 10 987543 2 Jason Justin Hackett Hackett West North East South 5D No No No This board was played on Vugraph, so the spectators were watching the equivalent of closed-circuit television, with the aid of a commentary.

The audience were told that the result from the table where Great Britain had been North-South was that Five Diamonds had made. The defence had led the king of spades, and had switched to the jack of hearts, on which South had contributed the queen. This had left East an awkward decision as to what to do next, and he had guessed wrong, by playing a second spade. Declarer could trump this trick and take care of all the outstanding diamonds before throwing his heart loser away on dummy's master clubs. Jason Hackett of Great Britain was also put in the same 7 bxc3 co 8Rbl 0-0 9 Be2 cxd4 10cxd4Qa5 HBd2 772 endgame after 11 Qd2 Qxd2 12Bxd2 is nowadays considered very comfortable for Black.

One of the trendiest variations in modern chess, this line is much fought over by the very top elite, with many players, Anand included, prepared to argue the toss on either side of the board. In return for the pawn White has a lead in development and chances of trapping the enemy queen. But Black's position has generally turned out to be quite resilient and the a pawn provides excellent long term counterplay. 120-0Bg4 14 BxfB Bxd4 15 e5 Na6 is good for Black 13.. 14 Bh4 Very unusual The obvious 14 Bxe7 can be met byRe815Rxb7Nc616.Bc5 Rxe4 17 Bd3Rxd4f? which led to a hugely complex draw between Kramnik and Kasparov in Novgorod 1 994.

But in the vast majority of games, the bishop retreats to e3, the point of going to g5 first being that the hBpawn may be a target later. In contrast to the dozens of games with 14Bg3, there have only thus far been a handful with Bh4. 1 doubt if it refutes such a resilient line, but Elescas certainly didn 't find the antidote here. Given that he plays go next move, perhaps it's better to do so immediately. 15d5g5 16Bg3b6 17Rel' Bxf3 Not 1 18Nxg5: Bxe2 19 Rxe2 Qa6 20 Nf3 en route viah4 tof5 18Bxf3Nd7 20 e6! fxe6 21 Rxe6 With the nasty threat ofd6 followed by Bd5.

22Rxe7 In the excitement over the Shirov Kramnik match, I still haven't even mentioned a major tournament; which finished several weeks ago: YTswanathan Anand's victory in Madrid, Having declined his invitation to play Kramnik under Kasparov's new WCC aegis, Anand may have felt that he still had something to prove elsewhere. Certainly, ne was most impressive in this 10-player, category 17 event, winning by a whole point with 659. Indeed, he had already guaranteed at least first equal with a round to spare. A last-round victory would have allowed Peter Svidler to catch up. But although this was the only game in which Anand felt that he was ever in crisis passed very quickly, and the draw was agreed in just 23 moves.

StilL this gave Svidler clear second on 5.5 ahead of Leko and San Segundo 5 an excellent result by the latter who was out-rated by all the rest bar lUescas by 125 points or more; Krasenkow, IHescas and Michael Adams 4.5, Yermolin-sky 4. Beliavsky 3 and Granda Zunigajust 2.5. Of Anand's four wins, perhaps the most impressive was his demoMon of Miguel IHescas using just 33 minutes on his clock compared to his opponent's nearly two hours. Viswanathan Anand Miguel IHescas Madrid 1998 Gnmnf eld Defence ld4Nfo 2Nf3g6 3c4Bg7 4 Nc3 d5 5 cxd5 Nxd5 6 e4 Nxc3 Bridge By Omar Sharif Viswanathan Anand (White) Believing Anand looked enormously risky but after 23 Re8! BfS a) 24 Hal Nc3! 25 Rxd8 Rxd8 26 Qel Qc427Rxa7Nb5isfar from clear. b) 24 Bxd5 Rxd5 25 Rxc8 Rxdl 26 Rxdl Kf7 is probably very good for White, But Black 's exposed king is not as easy to pin down as one might imagine since the black queen and bishop control a lot of squares.

Now, however, the dpawn proves decisive. 23 d6 Qxdl 24 Rxdl a5 Over the next few moves, IHescas rushes to embrace his fate. Kh728Rd8 Rxe (If 28 Bd6 soon wins)29 Bf5 mate! But perhaps he could have tried to create some disruption with 24... 4. 25 h3 a4 26 Rc7 Kh8 27 Rdcl! Rb8 28 Ra7 With the bishop raking a8 Black can 't suppon the a pawn.

29Rcc7a3 30Bdf Controlling a2 3lRxd7Rxd7 32Rxd' b4 33Bb3Ra8 34Rb7Mw Bxa2 Rxa2 etc36dr wins at least the bishop sc IHescas resigned Shirov's victory the final game against Kramnik came too late for inclusion last week Vladimir Kramnik (White to move) 19 Nd5? In a position like this, every move is at a premium. At this exact moment, Kramnik could and should have played 19 d7! at once. After Nd5 it 's crucial that 20. (though may be playable) 21 Nhf4! is bad for Black. 20Nxf6M)tt; however, if20d7exf3 21 dxe8Q Qxe8 22 Qe3 (22 Ne3 Ne4!) then the raking fire quickly disposes of White's king.

23. Qc6 is best when if a) 24 Qzf3Re8 b) 24 Rc5 Qd725 Qxf3Re8 26Be3 Qd327Kf2Bd428Bxd4 Qxd4 c)24Rd8 Rxd825Bxd8 Qc226 Qe8 Bf827gxf3 Qcl 28Kf2 Qxhl29Be7QJl are all winning. 21 d7 Kramnik had obviously missed this magnificent blow expecting instead 21. when 22 Bxf6! exf3 better but still good for White) 24 Qxe2 fxe2 25 Rd6! wins immediately. 22 dxe8Q Rxe8 23 Qe3 If 23 4 e3 wins.

Or 23 Qd7Bc3 24Bd2 (or 24 Rd2 Bb525 Qxe8 Bxe8 etc) 24.. mate! 24Qxb6Bxh4 25 Kd2 If25Nf2exf3 26Kd2 Some of the most puzzling positions in defence involve cashing your side's defensive winners against preemptive auctions. This hand features the most promising pair of young players to come out of England in many years. Jason and Justin Hack-ett have been demonstrating solid results in International tournaments for many years, and represented Britain in the European championships last year, only narrowly missing out on qualifying for the World championships. It was curious that the British have been featuring pairs of brothers in their international teams; Stuart and.