The Gin Game at Thomaston Opera House

The Thomaston Opera House, 158 Main St. in Thomaston presents D.L. Coburn's Pulitzer prize winning play The Gin Game on Fridays and Saturdays, August 16-17 and August 23-24 at 8 p.m.; and Sundays, August 18 and August 25 at 2 p.m.

The Gin Game won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1978, and the 1978-79 Broadway production with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, directed by Mike Nichols, won the Tony award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress and received Tony award nominations for Best Play, Outstanding Performance by an Actor and Outstanding Director. The 1997 revival on Broadway was Tony nominated for Best Production of a Revival.

The Gin Game is a finely drawn and sensitive drama set on a sunny porch where Weller Martin sits playing a game of solitaire. Prim and self-righteous Fonsia Dorsey joins him and they play gin rummy while revealing intimate details of their lives, each revelling in the other's attention. However, when tempers rise over the card game, what looked like the beginning of a rewarding friendship turns into a stinging battle of wills, and the game they play takes a far darker direction.

As the two characters play their contentious hands of gin, the play helps us see the game as parallel to their lives. We discover quite a lot about them, about their pretensions and their failings, as they contend across the cards.

What makes it possible for a play in which nothing happens but a few hands of gin to compel our attention through four scenes? In large part it's simply that it's intelligently written and funny. It's full of poignant lines like Weller's rueful "I'll amuse you immediately. At our age that can only mean one thing … I'll get the cards." Or his mordant explanation of his financial situation: "I made the mistake of getting sick—then I made the mistake of getting well." Of course, it is, after all, "just a game." It's just that sometimes it gets out of hand. Sometimes things go too far. Sometimes the person you are makes it impossible to get what you want.

This production stars Ed Parsons of Barkhamsted and Debra Johnson of Naugatuck, and is directed by Louis J. Marchetti of Waterbury. Tickets are $13 in advance or $15 on the day of the performance, and can be reserved by calling the box office at 860-283-6250.