Gin Game [VHS]

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Gin Game [VHS] Review

Winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize, the Best Production Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Best Actress for Jessica Tandy, and the L.A. Drama Critics Circle acting awards for both Tandy and her husband Hume Cronyn, this play was a winner from the day it opened. Written by D. L. Coburn, it focuses on two elderly residents of an old-age home as they come to terms with each other and themselves.

Initially, Fonsia Dorsey (Jessica Tandy) appears to be genteel and reserved, a woman who is offended by any hint of profanity, a perfect lady whose consignment to this welfare home is the source of her sorrow. Weller Martin (Hume Cronyn) is a tougher sort, a failed businessman who 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."

Quickly learning to play gin, Fonsia meets with Weller to play over the course of two weeks. Gradually, they reveal their pasts, hiding their failures and their tragedies within protective stories which preserve their images of themselves. As Fonsia repeatedly wins at cards, Weller, in frustration, begins to pick away at her cover, forcing her to look at herself realistically. She, in turn, begins to taunt him, making him confront his failures, and a violent argument ensues.

Tandy plays Fonsia as vulnerable but also manipulative. Cronyn is gruffer and more defensive. As Tandy tries not to gloat about winning and Cronyn tries (only slightly) to hide his frustration, their card games become episodes of psychological warfare, and the gin game becomes the game of life, with both players trying to determine whether winning is a matter of luck, Divine Intervention, or personal skill.

Tandy and Cronyn are perfect foils, using visual humor, gestures, sidelong glances, signs of discomfort, and all the other nonverbal signals that many elderly people have developed to perfection. As Cronyn slaps down a card that he is sure is a winner and Tandy tentatively reveals a better card, the humor reaches its height, and when Cronyn taunts her and Tandy finally responds by using the F-word, the dramatic irony reaches its peak.

Powerful, realistic, and filled with an ironic humor which sets the play's poignant messages into sharp relief, this video, an actual live performance, conveys the excitement of a great Broadway play starring the greatest of actors in one of the best and most satisfying productions ever mounted. Mary Whipple

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