The Gin Game

The Gin Game
Written by	Donald L. Coburn
Characters	Weller Martin Fonsia Dorsey
Date premiered	September 24, 1976
Place premiered	American Theater Arts Hollywood, California
Original language	English
Genre	Tragi-Comedy
Official site

The Gin Game is a two-person, two-act play by Donald L. Coburn that premiered at American Theater Arts in Hollywood in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. It was Coburn's first play, and the theater's first production. The play won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two elderly residents at a nursing home for senior citizens, strike up an acquaintance. Neither seems to have any other friends, and they start to enjoy each other's company. Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy, and they begin playing a series of games that Fonsia always wins. Weller's inability to win a single hand becomes increasingly frustrating to him, while Fonsia becomes increasingly confident.

While playing their games of gin, they engage in lengthy conversations about their families and their lives in the outside world. Gradually, each conversation becomes a battle, much like the ongoing gin games, as each player tries to expose the other's weaknesses, to belittle the other's life, and to humiliate the other thoroughly.

The play premiered in a production by American Theatre Arts in Los Angeles, California in September 1976, directed by Kip Niven. The play went on to be presented at the Actors Theatre of Louisville festival of new plays, the Long Wharf Theatre (New Haven) in July 1977, and the Wilbur Theatre, Boston.

The Gin Game opened on Broadway on October 6, 1977 at the John Golden Theatre and closed on December 31, 1978 after 517 performances. The play was directed by Mike Nichols and starred the married couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The play has come to be closely associated with them. Cronyn and Tandy were succeeded in the original Broadway run by E. G. Marshall and Maureen Stapleton.

It was produced in the United Kingdom in 1999 with Joss Ackland and Dorothy Tutin at the Savoy Theatre, directed by Frith Banbury.

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