I dimly remember seeing the Oscar-winning film of On Golden Pond, a master class of star performances including Katherine Hepburn and Fondas Henry and Jane who had to be kept on a tight leash by its astute director to stop this warm family saga sinking in a morass of overacting.
But seeing the original stage play in director Michael Lunney’s wonderful new production proved a revelation. Gentle yet unsentimental, On Golden Pond is an exercise in how to write well for the theatre, an American classic which richly deserves its new flowering on this national tour.
The plot is simple. An ageing couple arrive at their New England summer house on Maine’s Golden Pond for their annual vacation of forty years. That’s it. His constant and comic preoccupation with dying and hers with the brisk business of everyday life is commonplace, yet universal. If the first half is slow, it takes us a while to slow down enough to realise that their words aren’t mere soundbites. This is life itself.
But it’s the second act that is the marvel. Here we see a master-class as the flippancy of the first half becomes a hymn to endurance despite the fact that nothing is as we choose it, while across three generations people meet, somehow resolve their differences, and agree to go on. Almost nothing happens, and yet everything does.
Richard Johnson’s reticent performance as the father-figure who has not achieved his goal is a nuclear reactor of damped-down force. Stefanie Powers as his elegant wife Ethel demonstrates a talent for dignity and audience identification that is simply world class.
Graeme Dalling provides welcome comic relief as the marine postman Billy Ray while Elizabeth Carling is dignified and touching as troubled daughter Chelsea, a feisty young woman who’s taken a long time to make the right decisions.
Our very own Tom Roberts of Lichfield Rep fame here reveals he’s a main player who should be trying his luck across the pond where they don’t seem to be able to get enough of his kind of class, while Charlie Martin is uncannily fourteen-again as the boy who makes a grandpa into the father he should have been.
I’m not going to spoil things by revealing any more of the plot. I’ll just say that I’m amazed a production of this class is available right here in town. Don’t miss it.
On Golden Pond runs until April 14 including a Saturday matinee. For tickets phone the box office on 01543 or go online at www.lichfieldgarrick.com.