THE GIN GAME, Starring James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson, Opens on Broadway

The new Broadway production of D.L. Coburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, The Gin Game, starring Tony Award winners James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson, opens tonight, October 14 at the Golden Theatre (252 West 45th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue). The production will play a limited engagement through Sunday, January 10, 2016.

Mr. Jones and Ms. Tyson are sharing a Broadway stage for the first time since 1966, when they appeared in A HAND IS ON THE GATE at the Longacre Theatre. They also starred in the long-running Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's THE BLACKS. They starred opposite each other in the film THE RIVER NIGER and the TV movie HEAT WAVE. Mr. Jones is a two-time Tony Award winner (FENCES, THE GREAT WHITE HOPE), three-time Emmy Award winner (HEAT WAVE, GABRIEL'S FIRE, SUMMER'S END) and the recipient of a Grammy Award and an Honorary Academy Award. Ms. Tyson is a Tony Award-winner (THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL), a three-time Emmy Award winner (THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN, THE OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL) and an Academy Award nominee (SOUNDER).

Winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The Gin Game returns to the Golden Theatre where the original production opened in 1977, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Since its premiere, the play has also been staged across the United States and all over the world. The Gin Game has also been filmed twice for television; in 1981 with original stars Cronyn and Tandy, and in 2003 with Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.

Weller Martin (James Earl Jones) and Fonsia Dorsey (Cicely Tyson) meet on the porch of their nursing home and strike up a friendship, with Weller teaching Fonsia how to play gin rummy. As they play, they share stories about the lives they led in the outside world. But when Fonsia wins every hand, Weller becomes increasingly frustrated, until their gin games and conversations become a battleground, with each player exposing the other's failures, disappointments and insecurities.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus