Dark twist to old tale

Pain, complexity keep seniors' story away from cliche

By Lisa Bornstein, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Friday, February 22, 2008

Tension mounts during a card game between characters played by Patty Mintz Figel and Jim Hunt in Paragon Theatre Company's production of The Gin Game.

When Fonsia Dorsey and Weller Martin meet on the dingy sun porch of their nursing home, they exhibit just enough cautious warmth that a September romance seems in the offing.

But The Gin Game, D.L. Coburn's 30-year-old Pulitzer-winner, never steps into that trap of seeing older people as cute and lovable. Rather, in the hands of Patty Mintz Figel and Jim Hunt, Fonsia and Weller are adults, with all the complexity and pain that a lifetime can imbue.

It was Bette Davis who said that getting old is not for wimps, but Figel and Hunt prove the point under Warren Sherrill's usual delicate direction. Both are alone in the home, by circumstance and by choice. They're unsatisfied with a life of programmed frivolity from amateur choirs and magicians, and don't want to spend their remaining years talking about death.

Fonsia enters crying, just three weeks in the nursing home, lonely and unsettled. She finds in Weller a gruff but pleasant man comfortable in his skin and willing to teach her a new card game, which she takes to like Bobby Fischer to a rook. He seems to relish having someone to teach; she's happy to find a corner of community.

By the time she coaxes him into a waltz (added to the script in a 1990s revival), it looks like a sweet-old-people romance and perhaps a poignant death are in the offing. Thankfully, Coburn and Sherrill have plans for the two that are more realistic and darker.

As Fonsia, Mintz Figel brings an elegance and quiet strength to the role, which serves her well as tensions escalate between the two. She gradually unveils her character, revealing a far more complicated woman than initially presented herself.

Hunt's Weller meets us as tweedy and engaging. He's disdainful of his fellow oldsters, but in a way that would make the one he smiled upon feel valued. But as she piles up the wins, we see why he might have no visitors, his face turning the color of stewed tomatoes and his anger and cursing erupting without provocation.

The Gin Game is the first Paragon production in its new home at the Crossroads Theater, and it will be interesting to see whether the tiny square stage limits play selection. For now, designer David LaFont has given Weller and Fonsia a broken-down, dusty porch on which to play, where forgotten furniture has been unceremoniously stored. LaFont makes a nice visual metaphor for those who were once individuals and now have been placed on the cheapest shelf in reach.

bornsteinl@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101

The Gin Game

* Grade: B+

* When and where: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays through March 15, Crossroads Theater, 2590 Washington St.

* Cost: $17 to $19

* Information: 303-300-2210