This month's reading is "THE GIN GAME" by D.L.Coburn.
ABOUT THE PLAY:
The Gin Game opened on Broadway on October 6, 1977 at the John Golden Theatre and closed on December 31, 1978 after 517 performances. The play was directed by Mike Nichols and starred the married couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.[3] The play has come to be closely associated with them. Cronyn and Tandy were succeeded in the original Broadway run by E. G. Marshall and Maureen Stapleton.
The Gin Game is a story about Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two elderly residents at a nursing home for senior citizens, strike up an acquaintance. Neither seems to have any other friends, and they start to enjoy each other's company. Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy, and they begin playing a series of games that Fonsia always wins. Weller's inability to win a single hand becomes increasingly frustrating to him, while Fonsia becomes increasingly confident.
While playing their games of gin, they engage in lengthy conversations about their families and their lives in the outside world. Gradually, each conversation becomes a battle, much like the ongoing gin games, as each player tries to expose the other's weaknesses, to belittle the other's life, and to humiliate the other thoroughly.
Oak Park Festival Theatre - Oak Park's Equity theatre and the Midwest's oldest professional theatre performing the classics outdoors - is currently celebrating its 42nd year of theatrical excellence producing outstanding productions of the plays of William Shakespeare and other classical authors, as well as important contemporary plays by some of the world's greatest playwrights.
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