Alan Blumenfeld and Katherine James dive below the comic surface to find the inner scars of nursing home residents whose card game is something more.
Card tables shoved over, vicious slapping — who knew gin rummy could be a contact sport? Between senior citizens, no less? A superb revival of 1976’s “The Gin Game” at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum explores the pain seething below the comic surface of D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-hander.
Things start off innocently enough when cynical loner Weller strikes up a conversation with recent arrival Fonsia , a fellow refugee from Visitors Day festivities. Case in point: Weller’s mounting frustration at Fonsia’s winning streak. The buildup to his exploding tantrum could easily just rehash the exasperated bluster of Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Kramden on “The Honeymooners.” While Blumenfeld’s comic timing is impeccable, he also shows us how much more is at stake for Weller.
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