Ace in the hole

>> McCall and company deal up a good game of Gin

by AMY BARRATT

It's beyond difficult to find out anything about D.(onald) *. Coburn, who wrote The Gin Game. Even the author note in the programme at Centaur theatre, where that play is currently enjoying a revival, says more about The Gin Game than about its creator. Coburn's first play, it won the Pulitzer prize for drama when it premiered on Broadway in 1977. He has written several plays since, none of which have approached its success.

It makes you wonder if The Gin Game is one of those first plays that draws its power from its heavy autobiographical element. I don't mean that either of the old folks in the seniors' residence portrayed in the play represents Coburn--he was not yet 40 when he wrote it--but I suspect the curmudgeonly Weller and the manipulative Fonsia are based on his parents. For Coburn's sake, I hope not.

The Gin Game starts off cute and grows more and more troubling with each scene. Although I still think the script is more high quality movie-of-the-week than theatrical masterpiece, director Gordon McCall has delivered the goods here. He scores full points for one of the first and most important of a director's tasks in any production: picking the cast.

I confess I was worried that Douglas Campbell, used to the cavernous houses at Stratford, would be too broad and bombastic for the little house at Centaur. From his first entrance alone and in silence, Campbell allayed my fears. Although he milks about three laughs from the act of sitting down, he doesn't seem the least bit hammy. You just know that, whatever the play's shortcomings may be, you're going to be sucked in by this performance. The same goes for Viola Leger. It really is a pleasure to sit back and watch these two work together. This production should be required viewing for all acting students, as an object lesson in basics of the trade like listening and concentration.

As for the music, the overdone ballads from the '40s and '50s (Frank singing "Young at Heart," Louis Armstrong with "What a Wonderful World") are just right for the material. If you don't know the play, they lull you into a false sense of security; then, by the end, the same songs have become darkly ironic.

John Dinning's set is beautiful, no question about that, reminding you that realism, too, can be impressive. But it looks like a tiny cottage. I couldn't for the life of me figure out where "all those rooms" Fonsia talked about were hiding. Graham Frampton's lighting is appropriate and the thunderstorm, corny as it is in the context of the play, is technically very well pulled off.

Other patrons leaving the theatre seemed to think that the ending was ambiguous. I didn't think it was ambiguous enough to allow the play to fall outside the bounds of melodrama, but again that's probably more the playwright's fault than the production's. Although he insists on tackling the biggies like Twelfth Night and The Crucible, The Gin Game is the sort of piece--along with For the Pleasure of Seeing Again, which returns to Centaur March 23--that McCall does best. :

The Gin Game to March 26, Tues-Sat 8pm, Sun 2pm & 7pm at Centaur, $20-35; 288-3161