The Gin Game

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The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by D.L. Coburn.

Contents 1 Setting 2 Characters 3 Plot 4 Trivia

[edit] Setting

A nursing home

[edit] Characters

Fonsia Dorsey, an elderly woman

Weller Martin, an elderly man

[edit] Plot

Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two 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.

[edit] Trivia

• The play is closely associated with the married couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, who played Weller and Fonsia in the play's Broadway debut.
• It was produced in the UK in 1999 with Joss Ackland and Dorothy Tutin at the Savoy Theatre, directed by Frith Banbury.
• It was revived on Broadway in 1997 with Charles Durning and Julie Harris, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly. It received Tony Award nominations for Best Revival of a Play, Leading Actress in a Play and Direction of a Play.
• Television versions were made in 1981 with Cronyn and Tandy and in 2002 with Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.