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5.0 out of 5 stars
"God gave you that card.", November 24, 2004
Winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize, the Best Production Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and the Tony Award for Best Actress for Jessica Tandy, who starred in the play with her husband Hume Cronyn, The Gin Game, by D. L. Coburn, focuses on two elderly residents of an old age home as they come to know each other and themselves. Initially, Fonsia Dorsey appears to be genteel and reserved, a woman who is offended by any hint of profanity ("I never heard my papa say a curse word in his life."), a perfect lady whose consignment to this welfare home is the cause of her initial tears. Weller Martin is a tougher sort, a businessman who lost his business and now keeps himself busy playing cards. Both characters maintain their dignity by avoiding the other residents of the home, "a warehouse for the intellectually and emotionally dead."
Weller sees in Fonsia a potential partner in gin rummy, and she, "learning" the game from him, quickly catches on and wins several games. As they continue to meet and play over the course of two weeks, they gradually reveal their pasts, hiding their failures and their tragedies within protective stories which preserve their images of themselves. As Fonsia continues to win at gin, Weller becomes more and more frustrated, and he begins to pick away at her protective cover, identifying her weaknesses, attacking her credibility, and forcing her to look at herself realistically.
The play builds its themes slowly, hiding their serious nature behind the veneer of comedy, much of which is visual during the card games. The characters are both lonely and vulnerable, and their jokes about their lives and the lives of other residents ring true, full of universal humor. Their comments, however, betray their own concerns about their future. The gin game, symbolic of the game of life, consumes them as they try to determine whether winning is a matter of luck, Divine Intervention, or personal skill. A powerhouse of a play, using humor to set its poignant messages into sharp relief, The Gin Game is theater at its best. Mary Whipple
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