Nikolai Gogol's "Gamblers", first seen in Moscow in 1843, is the Russian equivalent of Mamet's "House Of Games": a diamond-bright study of greed, fantasy and conmanship with a sting in its tail. But brilliant as the new production by the 25-year-old Lithuanian Dalia Ibelhauptaite is, it is emphatically not, as the programme asserts, the English premiere: a cursory check would have shown that the play was seen only four years ago at the Etcetera in Camden Town.
"Acquisition", says Gogol in Dead Souls, "is the root of evil"; and his one-act play is a neat demonstration of that thesis, Ikharev, a compulsive gambler and card-sharp turns up at a provincial inn where he meets three kindred spirits.
Together they cheat and bamboozle a gay young Hussar out of 200,000 roubles. A government official is summoned who promises payment in four days. Needing the money urgently, the resident trio take 80,000 off Ikharev leaving him as he supposes, to claim the full amount and thereby make a handsome profit.
It is a classic study of the biter bit and of the way greed induces manic self-delusion: Ikharev has a wonderful speech, reminiscent of Khlestakov in "The Government Inspector", in which he fantasises about his ill-gotten gains and imagines, in Chris Hannan's sprightly and sardonic new version, that "I'll stroll past the Winter Palace without even looking at it".
But what is striking about this production is the way it reveals the darkness at the heart of Gogol's comedy. Oleg Sheintsis's design populates the stage with four shuttered, lamp-lit carriages from whose recesses the gamblers emerge like demi-devils. The hysteria of gambling is beautifully evoked as, in the game with the Hussar, cards float across the stage like autumn leaves and champagne-corks resonantly pop to the strains of Schnittke's Gogol Suite.
And while Mark Rylance turns the leading con-artist into a drawling, top-hatted Mephisto, Oleg Menshikov - lately the athletic Esenin to Vanessa Redgrave's Isadora - makes a compelling English-language debut as Ikharev.
I've never seen anyone act so much with his hair. He runs his fingers through it, hurls it tempestuously over his forehead and smoothes it down in moments of exasperation. It is a genuine display of highbrow acting in a remarkable production that shows that inside the Gogol whom Belinsky dubbed a "critical realist" lurked a satirical expressionist with a malevolent eye for human rapacity.

Submitted by Jane Grey