The blues singers like to say that if it wasn’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all.
Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two denizens of a cut-rate nursing home, might as well be singing those blues.
In “The Gin Game,” D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play that opened over the weekend at Park Square Theatre, Weller (Terry Hempleman) and Fonsia (Greta Oglesby) find themselves without any guests on visitors’ day.
Bitten by loneliness in what should be the halcyon final chapter of their lives, the two get to know each other over games of gin rummy. He is confident in his knowledge of a game that he conflates with his manhood, and gladly explains it to her.
Fonsia is understated about her skills and lets her playing do the speaking.
But what starts out as a winning situation as Fonsia sits down for cards turns into something that’s troubling. Pretty soon everyone is asking how a simple card game between two seniors leads to what looks like an abusive relationship.
On that score, “The Gin Game” has not aged well. We want to get up on Joseph Stanley’s set, with its folded-up wheelchair on the back sunporch where the action takes place, and stop Weller’s behavior. Of course, we wouldn’t have a play then.
Coburn’s two-hander is a theatrical favorite because it’s been such a star vehicle, with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy originating the roles on Broadway and James Earl Jones and Cecily Tyson making it indelible in their 2015 revival.
