I watched the show. I considered what I saw. I went home and slept on it. Now, I’m facing a mostly-blank Word Processor page and I have the same issues I had when The Gin Game ended.
What the heck was that all about?
Don’t get me wrong, Gin Game is entertaining. Much of it is quite funny, and the two-actor cast — Seattle area theater veterans (and husband and wife team) Kurt Beattie and Marianne Owen — do a superb job of portraying older, retired citizens, whom society has shucked off to a run-down, rotting, old age home. (Yes, that’s a funny send-up, despite its obvious social implications). At least, the two characters that they play are funny … for a while.
But Gin Game isn’t intended to just be a funny look at being old. At least, I don’t think that’s what the author or producer had in mind.
In both presentation and substance, The Gin Game is two quite different one-act plays with the same characters, separated by a fifteen-minute intermission. The first play — Act I — is a comedic romp, in which Weller Martin (Beattie’s character) meets and “woos” Fonsia Dorsey (Owen). Woos her not in a sexual or romantic way, but with a deck of cards and our “gin game.” Both are relatively new to the rest home and neither gets many visits from friends or family on Visitors’ Day. That lack finds them out on the front porch while everyone else in the Home frolics, inside, with their guests. Shy introductions ensue, followed by the realization that each enjoys playing cards, despite the fact that Fonsia was raised in a strict Presbyterian home where card playing was considered sinful.
Weller, seeing the possibility of a patsy, induces Fonsia to join him in a game of gin. That game —games, actually, several per scene — forms the nexus of the rest of Act I, as Weller first tries to teach Fonsia how to play, then desperately tries to beat her. At times, their interplay is hilarious.
Then we get to Act II.
Oh, there are still a few laughs, mostly in Scene I … but we quickly begin to see the facade of humor crack away, leaving the cold, ugly reality of being throw-away humans.
I’m not going to get into the details of why each character was thrown away; their flaws are their own and the core of why they were so funny in the first act. Their flaws are also painfully human. While we can all recognize the flaws as being something that may or may not be in our own natures, we can also sympathize with two people who, after living life in the best way they knew how, find themselves in a place they never wanted, in circumstances they never foresaw, facing a future with little flavor or hope … except through each other.
How all this realization (self and otherwise) leads to the enigmatic ending of the show is a spoiler to which I won’t go. Suffice it to say, both characters end up where they may always have been destined to end up, but where neither wanted to end up. I left Gin Game with a sneaking sense of “there but for the grace of God go I,” and I suspect I’m not the only senior citizen who will have that reaction. Younger audience members, I would hope, might re-assess how they deal with their aging parents. No one deserves to be tossed away like that.
It’s not often we get an opportunity to laugh out loud and then face our demons, but The Gin Game provides that opportunity. Don’t let anything I’ve said here scare you away; this show is worth the effort. Besides, with two forty-minute acts and a fifteen-minute intermission, it’s hardly a huge time commitment; I was home by 9:30 after a 7:30 curtain.
The Gin Game, a Village Theatre production: At the Francis J. Gaudette Theatre in Issaquah until February 25, moving to the Everett Performing Arts Center from March 2-25. Issaquah: 425-932-1942; Everett, 425-257-8600.