PhotosAs He Readies For His Latest Broadway Return, We Celebrate Over 50 Years of James Earl Jones OnstagePlaybill.com takes a look at James Earl Jones' stage triumphs in a career spanning over 50 years. The acclaimed actor returns to Broadway with Cicely Tyson in a revival of D.L. Coburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Gin Game. Previews begin Sept. 23 at the Golden Theatre.
Directed by Leonard Foglia, The Gin Game will officially open Oct. 14. The limited run is scheduled through Jan. 10, 2016. Rehearsals began Aug. 17.
Tyson and Jones will be sharing a Broadway stage for the first time since 1966, when they appeared in A Hand Is On The Gate at the Longacre Theatre. They also appeared together in the long-running Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet’s The Blacks; Moon On a Rainbow Shawl and the films "The Comedians"; "The River Niger" and "Heat Wave".
Tickets are on sale via Telecharge at (212) 239-6200 or (800) 447-7400 or online at Telecharge.com. The production will feature set and costume design by Riccardo Hernandez, lighting design by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer and sound design by David Van Tieghem.
"Weller Martin (James Earl Jones) and Fonsia Dorsey (Cicely Tyson) meet on the porch of their nursing home and strike up a friendship, with Weller teaching Fonsia how to play gin rummy," according to press notes. "As they play, they share stories about the lives they led in the outside world. But when Fonsia wins every hand, Weller becomes increasingly frustrated, until their gin games and conversations become a battleground, with each player exposing the other’s failures, disappointments and insecurities."
The Gin Game returns to the Golden Theatre where the original production opened in 1977, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. The play last appeared on Broadway in 1997, in a production starring Charles Durning and Julie Harris. The Gin Game has also been filmed twice for television; in 1981 with original stars Cronyn and Tandy, and in 2003 with Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
The Broadway revival will be produced by OSTAR Productions.
The Golden Theatre is located at 252 West 45th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue.
Next year, Carnegie Hall's house band will perform Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony, unfinished works by Schubert, and the final concert of Conductor Bernard Labadie.