CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio -- The River Street Playhouse will light up the stage again in dramatic fashion 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday Oct.
18 and 19 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct.
20 with “The Gin Game.” Chagrin Valley Little Theater’s smaller black box venue has not hosted a public performance since the pandemic shutdown. Written by D.
L. Coburn, the popular, award-winning play is directed by Michael Rogan and stars Stephen Morse and Kate Williams-Bernardo, who performed it together at the Willoughby Summer Theater at Andrews Osborne Academy and are reprising it for this special weekend in Chagrin Falls. The playwright uses the game of gin rummy as a metaphor for life’s struggles.
Winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for drama, Jessica Tandy won a Tony in the role as she played opposite to her husband Hume Cronyn. The plot has character Weller Martin, a nursing home resident, playing solitaire on a shabby nursing home porch when he is joined by a prim woman, Fonsia Dorsey. They are united in their dislike of the nursing home and their love for cards.
As Fonnsia wins every game and personal details are revealed, their shared confidences become weapons in an escalating conflict. Weller seeks a victory to overcome a lifetime of defeats. Dorsey’s rigidity may leave her bitter and lonely in her twilight years.
The work explores themes of aging, competition and the search for connection. When first introduced the play won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for drama and Jessica Tandy won a Tony i.
