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The Bay Theater Company
of Annapolis continues their production of The Gin Game until March 28th of the Pulitzer Prize Winner of 1978 by
D.L. Coburn, and it is an excellent one. The director, Lucinda Merry-Browne and her
artistic team of actors and technical people have located the play - subtitled a Tragi-Comedy in Two Acts - with every aspect
of the grim and comic world for which it was written. The Gin Game is about two people who work
out their predetermined fate over a game of cards. Fonsia (Rena Cherry Brown) and Weller (Paul Danaceau), two 180-degree misfits,
are thrown together in a nursing home and the latter suggests playing Gin to while away the time. As with
all games, personality is revealed and we find that Weller’s need to win cannot surmount Fonsia’s subtle resourcefulness
and extraordinary run of luck. Both are hiding secrets that each will ferret out. It is a well made, seemingly
timeless play in which the subjects of divorce, ungrateful children, inheritance, care of the elderly, abuse, and loneliness
are confronted. The play is directed, designed, and performed naturalistically, with the stage abutting the seating of this
intimate space like a patio in a trailer park. The audience experiences the characters’
every emotion, the fourth wall being well beyond the last row of this black-box theater. The set design,
by Ken Sheats, and attention to detail in selection of props and set decoration, by Jo Ann Gidos, work well to create a rundown
mood. Lighting, by father and son team Steven and Preston Strawn, nicely move the play through the comic and emotional sequences.
The casting of the actors is striking:
Ms. Brown, who is a nuanced and angular performer, with all elements of her physicality on display, is paired with Mr. Danaceau
who is more natural with a wide vocal range. It is a delight to watch Ms. Brown transform herself into
a spritely septuagenarian, fingers and toes tapping, with a pulled-in demeanor. Mr. Danaceau is more direct
as he moves from simmering anger to explosive rage: you fear for his safety and that of his fellow actor. The audience becomes
riveted by the verbal jousting and escalating outbursts that accompany both Weller’s incredible losing streak and Fonsia’s
efforts to defend herself. Weller seems to read life better than Fonsia, who appears the better at games, but neither can
make much of the hand that life has dealt them.
There is an existential or theater of the absurd quality to the play.
Some of the events appear improbable, but not impossible. Somewhere in the universe Weller and Fonsia
will be sitting down to a game of cards (maybe not with each other) with exactly the same outcome in store, but they will
continue to play on. We empathize with the characters, if we do not quite warm to them, lamenting the fact
they do not grow.
While the play is quite funny at times, it is also troubling, and the director and actors are to be complimented
for their unflinching look at the characters’ dark sides. Don’t go to the play expecting the classic “good
time,” but go for an up-close and personal look at the human condition – a hallmark of great theater.
And do go before this wonderful production goes dark, late Saturday evening March 28th.
Sound check: Normal
Program notes: Average
Applause
meter: 4 hands
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