The Gin Game (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

There could be no higher praise than to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which Coburn did for The Gin Game in 1978. Before that award, though, the play had caught the attention and admiration of some very important people in the world of theater. When Hume Cronyn, one of the most respected stage actors of the twentieth century, read the play, he immediately wanted to take it to Broadway. The famed director Mike Nichols agreed to direct it within hours of hearing about the play, and it went on to garner a Tony nomination. When Dick Van Dyke saw the play on Broadway, he decided that he and Mary Tyler Moore had to perform it together someday; in 2003, more than twenty-five years after the play premiered, the two performed the roles of Weller and Fonsia in a PBS television production of the play.

Thomas Luddy, in a review published in Library Journal, remarks that "the play's brilliance lies in its simplicity and economy." He goes on to say that Coburn etches the issues of aging, loneliness, and the need for meaningful activity "clearly and devastatingly in terms that are also witty and entertaining," and declares that The Gin Game "will become one of the great classics of the American theater." Tony Curulla, writing for the Syracuse Post-Standard, echoes these sentiments with a description of the play as having "taut writing that delivers more than it promises" and a "fast-paced, smart dialogue."

A reviewer for the Buffalo News, Terry Doran, says: "You wouldn't imagine so much laughter could be squeezed from one little word. The word is 'gin.'" This critic comments that there is not much more to the play than Weller's dilemma of balancing his desire to play cards with Fonsia against his rage at always losing to her. On the other hand, Doran admires the way "Coburn restricts the confessionals." He comments further that "they illuminate but do not weigh down his play. The past, then, is no more than a dollop of sadness and perspective in the present." Peter Marks of the New York Times also declares The Gin Game to be "virtually plotless." In contrast, a theater critic for the St. Petersburg Times, Joy Davis-Platt, finds The Gin Game to be a "very rich story" because there is "so much drama and subtlety" within the play.

Terry Doran considers The Gin Game to be "a very funny play." While agreeing that the dialogue evokes laughter from the audience, Kathleen Allen, a critic for the Arizona Daily Star, finds The Gin Game "a disturbing play," because the two characters do not learn how to change their destructive behaviors and will likely die bitter and alone. In a review for the Austin American-Statesman, Jamie Smith Cantara likewise says that the play is "funny, yet bleak."

Among those who have given The Gin Game a negative review is Greg Evans, in an article for the venerable theater newspaper Variety on the occasion of the revival of the play in 1997. He wondered how the play had deserved a Pulitzer, because it is "at best merely decent," and he called The Gin Game a formulaic "one-concept play." Some critics do not find jokes about aging and the aged to be funny, nor can they tolerate the lack of a happy ending. In fact, some viewers feel that there is no ending at all. Nonetheless, The Gin Game continued to be a favorite of regional theaters and was still being produced around the world into the twenty-first century. Whatever its flaws may be, the play deserves its praise, because it has stood the test of time.