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Playing the cards you're dealt
By JOY DAVIS-PLATT, Times Staff Writer SPRING HILL -- Alone and afraid, Weller and Fonsia face the winter of their lives. At a card table, each learns to face a lifetime of regrets, and both gain the strength to love unconditionally. Their story unfolds in The Gin Game, a tragi-comedy by D. L. Coburn that opens today at The Forum at Stage West Community Playhouse. Both Weller Martin, played by Sam Petricone, and Fonsia Dorsey, played by Stage West veteran Lillian Falcone, live in a nursing home -- a place neither wants to be. But it is only their bodies that have given way to the ravages of age. Both possess quick wit, and Weller has the temper to match. Their relationship starts when Weller convinces Fonsia to play a game of gin rummy, and most of the action in the show takes place at the card table. The lies they tell each other about their past are the delusions that have kept them afloat in a world that has passed them by. As Weller methodically deals hands of gin rummy, he grows more agitated with each loss. He tells Fonsia he is not like the other nursing home residents, who he says are lined up in their wheelchairs like "rows of wrinkled pumpkin heads." "He has a very abrasive personality," said Petricone, who played Sam Leibowitz in last season's The Day They Kidnapped the Pope at Stage West. "At this point, (Fonsia) is the only person in the home who will still talk to him." As secrets are uncovered and pretense crumbles, the game grows confrontational, and these two lonely people must face what they fear the most. "(Fonsia) has been alone for 41 years," said Falcone. "(Weller) picks apart anything she tells him, but she knows how to hold her own with a man like that." Director Richard Michaelis says the play's theme is mirrored in the game of gin rummy the couple plays. "It's really a metaphor for life," Michaelis said. "As you live, you pick up some cards and discard others. But when we die, we've got to lay all of our cards down anyway." The production, he said, is an exercise in storytelling. Because it is in Stage West's smaller Forum theater, nuance, movement and inflection become even more important than usual. "There is so much drama and subtlety here," he said. "It's a very rich story." At a glanceWHAT: The Gin Game, a tragi-comedy by D. L. Coburn WHERE: The Forum at Stage West Community Playhouse, 8390 Forest Oaks Blvd., Spring Hill WHEN: Shows are at 8 p.m. today, Saturday and Oct. 18 and 19 and at 2 p.m. Sunday and Oct. 20. COST: Tickets are $10. The box office is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and an hour before each show. Call 683-5113.
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