Playing the hand you’re dealt

On the sun porch, amid the discarded debris of empty boxes, Christmas wreaths and luggage brought in but never brought out, Weller and Fosnia, neighbors at the “home for the aged,” meet for the first time, each seeking refuge from a visitor’s day that doesn’t include them. They strike up a game of gin—and an unlikely friendship.

Director Joanne Johnson was not sure what to expect from D.L. Coburn’s The Gin Game when she first encountered it. Often, plays that are centered on older characters tend to be little more than romantic fluff. To her surprise, Johnson found the piece to be brilliantly structured.

“The play is a very insightful and moving exploration of the development of a relationship between two elderly people who are in a home for the aged,” Johnson said. “They are there because of illness and also because they have no money, no family and nowhere else to go.”

The gin game is a metaphor for life at any age: We use all kinds of gameplay as we navigate our way through our world.

The question is, what are you going to do with the hand that you are dealt? You can become enraged, toss the cards and refuse to play, or you can accept the cards that have turned up and find the best way to make them work.

For these two characters, at least at the beginning of the play, there is a sense that the deck is stacked against them. Each has a history of divorce, family estrangement and financial troubles. They are in a place that they don’t want to be.

By meeting, they are given the option to create a fulfilling relationship. But like any relationship, after the courtship and honeymoon stage, they also have to deal with challenges, conflicts and disappointments.

The Gin Game asks, How will you choose to live your life, especially at the end? Are you always going to be saddled with your old disappointments and failures, or are you going to spend each day trying to grow and enjoy life as best you can?

The play was written in 1976 and first appeared on Broadway in 1977, starring Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. In the last 36 years, the play has been produced numerous times around the world, including a film and a television adaptation.

The Gin Game has also garnered multiple awards, including four Tony awards for the original Broadway production and the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1978.

Despite its age, the play’s message is universal and timeless. It is very apt as our country’s baby boomers age and the senior population grows.

There has also been a change in family structure: Families are not necessarily expected to personally care for aging relatives the way they once were, and we are seeing the number of residents in long-term care facilities continue to grow.

The play stars current Artistic Director for Artists Rep Allen Nause, who is retiring at the end of this season, and Vana O’Brien, a founding member of the Resident Acting Company at Artists Rep.

Surprisingly, this production marks the first time that the two veteran actors perform together in an Artists Rep production.

“I am tremendously excited and honored to finally work with Vana onstage at Artists Rep in a play we both love,” Nause said in an email.

Johnson, Nause and O’Brien have a long artistic history together, and for the director, it has been wonderful to be able to work with actors of Nause’s and O’Brien’s caliber.

“They are both incredibly smart people,” Johnson said, “who are very dedicated and hardworking.”

Johnson laughingly pointed out that, between the three of them, they have about 150 years of theater experience. This combined experience was put to excellent use when the cast and crew had to deal with an unexpected challenge: actually playing gin onstage.

Throughout the course of the play, the two characters play 15 different hands of gin rummy. The wrangling of all the different games and getting the cards to stay in sync with the lines in the script required a very precise form of choreography.

Sometimes the script says that you have a nine card when you are actually holding a three, so what are you going to do? In theater, as in life, you simply play the hand you are dealt.