CLOSING WEEKEND!
Geriatric Games of Chance and Life
3 Stars, Ted Hadley, The Buffalo News
“...The play does maintain its vigor and its insight, and provides a marvelous opportunity to watch two fine actors going at it. Actors (Joy) Scime and (Mark) Donahue are assuredly learning a new respect for the artistry of the Cronyns as they navigate card game after card game.” Anthony Chase, Artvoice
REVIEWS
ARTVOICE’s Anthony Chase
The Buffalo News, Ted Hadley
SpeakupWNY.com, Augustine Warner
The American Rep Theater of WNY starts the New Year and the second-half of the 2011-12 season with a production of D.L. Colburn's classic work, THE GIN GAME, to be presented at the Buffalo East, 1410 Main Street, January 20th through February 12th.
Colburn best captures the idea of how isolation, as one grows older, can affect mental stability and the ability to separate fact from fiction in one's personal history.
THE GIN GAME takes place in an underfunded nursing home where two retirees, Weller Martin, played by Mark Donahue and Fonsia Dorsey, played by Joy Scime, ease their need for friendship by enjoying companionship through causal conversation and an introductory game of gin rummy.
Call it "beginner's luck” throughout the course of several games, Fonsia continues to soundly beat the more experience card player, Weller. His frustration soon gets the best of his judgment and he starts to hold his losing streak against Fonsia.
This bitterness becomes personal as Weller begins to use Fonsia's personal history, learned through previous pleasant conversation, as a way of psyching her out. Fonsia, in turn, holds her past as tightly as her next card hand and she practices her own form of psychological warfare on Weller.
What ensues is masterly crafted by the playwright Colburn is a card table battleground where two lost souls, at the expense of one another, try to find some last bit of purpose in their lives.
Buffalo East
1410 Main Street