GOLDEN POND

posted by James Reel

    I've got just one review in the slender arts section of the latest Tucson Weekly:

    Over the past couple of months, old movies have unspooled all over Tucson stages. The UA offered the original theatrical version of The Philadelphia Story; another troupe mounted Deathtrap, and now Live Theatre Workshop revives the stage version of Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond.
    The best thing about LTW's production is that it takes the script on its own terms, never mimicking the Henry Fonda/Katharine Hepburn movie (or at least what I remember of the movie, which I haven't seen since it was released 25 years ago).
    Director Jeremy Thompson (no relation to the author) emphasizes the abundant comic elements of the script and downplays the potential weepiness at the end. We follow elderly Norman and Ethel Thayer through their 48th summer at their cabin at Golden Pond, Maine; Norman is forgetful, and his heart is giving out, and at the end, it looks quite likely that he won't have a 49th summer on the lake. Actually, that seems evident rather early on. But this is no teary two-hour farewell, and it's not even much of a sentimental journey. It's a study of two people who've managed to have a good marriage for a long, long time, and how Norman comes to terms not so much with his impending death as with his semi-estranged daughter and her soon-to-be stepson.