'Golden Pond' a summer must-see

By Joseph T. Rozmiarek
Advertiser Drama Critic

•	'On Golden Pond' What: "On Golden Pond" Where: The Actors Group, Yellow Brick Studio in Kaka'ako When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 4 p.m. Sundays, through July 20 Tickets: $10 Information: 722-6941

The play by Ernest Thompson is set in a summer cottage in Maine, where Norman and Ethel Thayer have been spending their summers for the past 50 years. Norman is about to mark his 80th birthday —and his forgetfulness and heart palpitations have him cracking morbid jokes about death.

Ethel is 10 years younger and happy to be back in treasured surroundings. Their exchanges ring with authenticity and build a sweetly moving portrait of a long relationship.

Best remembered for the film version starring Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, the story is a tender sketch of a family re-establishing itself after years of moving on automatic pilot.

Daughter Chelsea (Victoria Gail-White) is in her mid-40s, divorced and unsettled. She's estranged from her father because of a childhood she remembers as oppressive and fault-finding. After an absence of eight years, she's paying a visit with her new boyfriend (John Wythe White) and his teenage son (Geoffrey Suthers).

The wrench in the family machinery is that she wants to leave the boy with the old folks for a month while she vacations in Europe with his father.

Time with the boy is a tonic for Norman, who delights in the grandson he never had and — through that awakening of spirit — is able to open a new door to dealing with his daughter.

Performances are everything in this character comedy. Director David Farmer orchestrates them skillfully.

Tharp is excellent, bracketing Norman's sarcasm and irony with neat pauses and baleful expressions that are both innocent and penetrating. Timing is everything in this character and Tharp plays his lines like an expert fisherman setting a hook.

McGrath's Ethel is the perfect counterpoint, fussing, musing, peacemaking, and gently scolding the "old poop" with whom she has shared the past 50 years.

Gail-White is appropriately rigid and withholding as the mid-life daughter who immediately retreats to adolescent whining in the presence of her father and John White enjoys a good scene as her new boyfriend — simultaneously sidestepping Norman's penetrating wit, yet managing to challenge him while engaged in full backpedaling.

Suthers makes the son likeable under his wisecracking bravado.

Bill Carr does fine supporting work as the dimwit mailman and Chelsea's ancient boyfriend, giving him a warm laugh and the presence of a huge, shambling bear.

If there was an award for adaptive reuse for a stage set, it would go to this production for turning Paul Guncheon's Irish pub from "The Weir" into a crumbling summer cottage filled with fading family photos, mementos and bric-a-brac.

"On Golden Pond" is as refreshing as a breeze off the lake. Make it part of your summer vacation.