With Broadway's upcoming Gin Game revival getting ready to show its hand, Long Beach CA's International City Theatre will offer its own production of D.L. Coburn's comedy. To cut the deck on opening night -- tonight, March 14 -- Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill will appear in a cameo role as the maid. Mayor O'Neill will also host a gala, pre-show dinner at L'Opera restaurant.

Coburn's two-hander comedy/drama, about a sparring but loving elderly couple, will be directed by ICT artistic director Shashin Desai and star Joseph Cardinale and Patricia Place in the roles most associated with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. Cardinale recently appeared in Odyssey Theatre's Cementville; Place appeared on Broadway in Tartuffe.

Costumes for the show are by Gina Davidson, lighting by Paulie Jenkins, set by Bradley Kaye.

As for the other Gin Game, Julie Harris and Charles Durning will star in a Charles Nelson Reilly-directed revival of the Pulitzer Prize winning comedy, starting previews April 8 and opening April 20 at the Lyceum Theatre. That production show will be under the auspices of Tony Randall's National Actors' Theatre, with Manny Kladitis as executive producer.

For tickets ($23; opening night gala w/dinner $97) to The Gin Game at Center Theatre on East Ocean Blvd. In Long Beach, call (562) 938-4128. -- By David Lefkowitz