THE first pleasure is to welcome the Royal National Theatre from London back to Dublin after far too long an absence. The second pleasure, is to mark an extraordinarily accomplished first play from Patrick Marber.

The skill and deftness of its construction has all the marks of a dramatist who has been practising his craft for many years. The balance between the comedy created from a group of misfit waiters and chef in what seems not too successful a London restaurant, and the sorrow of a bothered father (the restaurant's owner) over hiss relationship with a son addicted to gambling is nicely weighted.

But the context and content of the piece seem to this reviewer not to have travelled well from London to Dublin.

It is a Sunday night, when the idiotically naive Mugsy whose ambition is to convert a public toilet on the Mile End Road into a restaurant, the much sharper Frankie who plans to move to Las Vegas, the torn Sweeney who wants to see his young daughter the following day, and Carl, the owner's gambler son gather after midnight at Stephen, the owner's request, to play a weekly game of poker in the restaurant basement.

This particular night, the card party is joined by a slightly mysterious stranger called Ash who holds sway over Carl. All of them, in their different ways, are losers and some of them seem almost addicted to loss.

Are we to take their poker game as some kind of serious metaphor for real life? If so, it is not persuasive. And the comedy is modest enough, relying more on cliche and caricature than on wit.

The playing last night seemed tiredly mechanical with only Kieron Forsyth as the hyperactive Mugsy and Just in Salinger as Frankie hitting occasional moments of apparent spontaneity. The rest were mannered as if by habit.

The author's direction was uneven and often too fussy. Bunny Christie's sets were functional (although the use of an unnecessary revolve in the last act added to the sense of fussiness) and Mick Hughes's lighting was, as usual, apart from an inexplicable dimming for the crisis confrontation between Stephen and Ash, excellent.

The West End awards (best comedy from the Evening Standard and best play from the Writers' Guild) must remain a mystery, unless 19,95 was an unduly thin theatrical year in London.