Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones to Star in ‘The Gin Game’ on Broadway

Multiple award-winning actors Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones will appear together on stage for the first time in almost 50 years in a new Broadway production of D.L. Colburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Gin Game.

Preview performances begin Sept. 21 at the Golden Theatre in advance of an Oct. 13 opening. Leonard Foglia (Master Class, Thurgood), who directed Jones in a revival of On Golden Pond, will stage the show.

This will be the first time the two stars have acted on Broadway together since 1966’s A Hand Is on the Gate at the Longacre. They also co-starred Off-Broadway in The Blacks in 1961 and in the film The River Niger and the TV movie Heat Wave.

Tyson has won a Tony Award for The Trip to Bountiful, three Emmys for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (two awards) and The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, and was nominated for an Oscar for Sounder.

Jones, who most recently appeared on Broadway in You Can’t Take It With You, has won two Tonys for The Great White Hope and Fences, three Emmys for Heat Wave, Gabriel’s Fire and Summer’s End, and an honorary Oscar.

The Gin Game is a two-character piece about a pair of senior citizens playing out their anger and frustration over a series of hands of gin.

The original 1977 Broadway production starred Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn. Julie Harris and Charles Durning headlined a 1997 revival. Tandy and Cronyn repeated their roles in a 1981 TV version and Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke did a 2003 remake.

About The Gin Game Legendary Tony winners James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson come together on Broadway in the Pulitzer Prize winning play The Gin Game. Jones and Tyson star as Weller and Fonsia, residents of a nursing home who are not so popular with their fellow retirees. They strike up an unlikely friendship, and Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy. The pair's congenial games turn into battles, just as their originally friendly banter turns similarly vicious. The Gin Game was written by Donald L. Coburn and won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Leonard Foglia directs this production.
Run time Not yet announced Good for kids? A dialogue-heavy play about two elderly people reflecting on life and trading verbal jabs might not be the most entertaining show for children. Did you know? The Gin Game was first staged on Broadway in 1977. That production starred Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and was directed by Mike Nichols. James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson have three Tonys between them. Jones won in 1969 for The Great White Hope and in 1987 for Fences. Tyson won her Tony in 2013 for The Trip to Bountiful.