Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones will play 'The Gin Game' on Broadway this fall

NEW YORK, April 22 (UPI) -- Stage legends James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson are to star in a new production of D.L. Coburn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Gin Game, producers announced Wednesday.

This will mark the first time in almost 50 years the Tony Award winners share a Broadway stage. They previously appeared together in 1966's A Hand is on the Gate at the Longacre Theatre. They also starred in the long-running Off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's The Blacks, the film The River Niger and the TV movie Heat Wave.

Directed by Leonard Foglia, the revival of The Gin Game is to open Oct. 13 at the Golden Theatre. Previews are to begin Sept. 21. The play returns to the same house 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.

"Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey meet on the porch of their nursing home and strike up a friendship, with Weller teaching Fonsia how to play gin rummy," a synopsis said. "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."