Metro Pulse/Backstage/The Gin Game

Comment
on this story

What:
The Gin Game

When:
Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m.; through May 12

Where:
Theatre Central, 141 S. Gay Street

COST

Unlike Theatre Central itself, the characters in The Gin Game feel their age

by Paige M. Travis

With an entire generation of baby boomers reaching for their reading glasses and prescription meds, aging has never been more of a social and political issue. Millions of books, articles and TV news segments are dedicated to the issues of growing old, but there's still so much society doesn't understand or appreciate about the years past middle age. For one thing, we don't even know what to call it; are "old" and "elderly" bad words nowadays? D.L. Coburn paints a none-too-comforting portrait of the senior years in The Gin Game, winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize. Starring Margy Ragsdale and Ed White, Theatre Central's production is amusing and surprisingly thought-provoking.

Having just arrived at Bentley Nursing and Convalescent Home, Fonsia Dorsey is pleased to meet fellow resident Weller Martin on the sun porch. They bond over a shared distrust of the home and laugh at how the staff treats them like children. Fonsia has a delicate and grandmotherly charm, and Weller is crotchety and cynical. He invites her to play a game of gin, which she accepts after a refresher course. They deal the cards and talk: about illness, ex-spouses, families, and their opinion about stewed tomatoes. In order to confide in Weller, Fonsia has to abide his mood swings, which worsen as she continues to beat him effortlessly.

Weller is a sore loser. Tapping his cane and shifting anxiously in his seat, White shows us how alike impatient youth and frustrated old age can be. While Fonsia keeps her emotions in check, Weller is ferocious in his outbursts and as unpredictable as a teen-ager. He has the confidence and command of a younger man, but his vulnerability shows through in his inability to quit playing or find another game. As the play progresses, we begin to understand that Weller can't let it go because he's losing more than a game of gin. He's losing his mind. After losing his family, his business, his money, his self-respect and control over his own life, Weller can't lose at gin, one of the last vestiges of his youth, the way his life used to be. Losing game after game to this prudish newcomer is the last straw.

As Weller unravels, Fonsia continues to hang out with him, partly because she's intimidated by him and because she's equally starved for companionship. "You've got diabetes. I've got something else," Weller says. The disease he suffers from is common among the old and young alike; its symptoms include bitterness, regret, fear, loneliness, doubt and frustration. Instead of finding hope in his friendship with Fonsia, Weller allows his disease to eat him up.

Although the actors are both clearly younger than their characters, Ragsdale and White do a fair job of portraying senior adults. Topped with a curly gray wig, Ragsdale has perfected her imitation of an elderly woman without ever resorting to insult or a parody of a feeble old woman. White's mannerisms are too young and healthy for Weller's 70-something years, but he is satisfactorily cranky and fidgety. A cardigan sweater and some polyester pants might have given White a more On Golden Pond look. And when he blows his top, his rage is truly frightening (a splintered cane during the play's last dress rehearsal did the trick for me). White makes us feel like we're really witnessing this man lose his entire deck.

Even though she's only known him for a few days, we believe Fonsia truly cares about Weller, (the direction could have shown this through more physical interaction). They are in the same boat: divorced spouses, absentee children, weakened bodies and fragile spirits. Fonsia isn't unmoved by his madness. White lets Weller's rage escape in bursts, while Ragsdale's passion and frustration build to the disturbing climax of their final gin game.

"It's unreasonable to expect people to give up everything they have," Fonsia says early in the play, speaking of the personal belongings she's had to leave behind. But in old age we give up more than just possessions. We give up dignity and self-control and the power to make decisions for ourselves. Weller's cynicism and anger are totally understandable in the face of such injustice.

The Gin Game doesn't end happily or with any concrete conclusions, but we are left with a few clues about how to smooth our paths through old age or help our loved ones manage the transition. If there is wisdom to be gained from The Gin Game, it's from the metaphor of life as a card game: It's how you play the game, not whether you win or lose because, after a lifetime of drawing and discarding, we all lay our cards down eventually.