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Still shining with a magical sparkle
Wolverhampton Grand ***** A GOOD cast can make an indifferent or
even a bad script watchable so give them something of real quality to
work with and you are in for a treat. On Golden Pond
is perhaps best known for the 1981 film version starring Jane and Henry
Fonda and Katharine Hepburn but Ernest Thompson's original 1979
off-Broadway play had already been showered with awards before Jane
Fonda snapped up the film rights for what was, in essence, a family
affair. The play is lighter and funnier than the film,
peppered with one liners between the cantankerous Norman, a grumpy old
man par excellence, who is about to celebrate his 80th birthday, and
his long-suffering, in the nicest possible way, wife Ethel. Hollywood veteran Richard Johnson bestrides the
stage as a colossus as Norman, a man who does not suffer fools gladly,
or indeed anyone else for that matter. Remarkably Johnson is actually
playing the part of someone younger than himself. The star is 85 this
year, not that you would ever know it. He provides more than ample proof
to the notion that age is just a number with, offstage, a ready smile, a
wealth of stories and anecdotes and a twinkle in both eyes for
confirmation. Matching him stride for stride is Stefanie
Powers, perhaps best known as Jennifer Hart from the 80s TV series Hart
to Hart. There is much more to Hart than that though including a whole
career in the theatre, as well as films and TV, and if that is not
enough there is her work with zoos and her commitment to wildlife
conservation in East Africa with the William Holden Wildlife Foundation
which she formed in 1982. She plays Ethel Thayer, which needs a decent
speech defect or perfect teeth to say successfully. The play opens as the pair arrive at their summer
cottage on Golden Pond in Maine for the 48th year and closes as the
summer ends and they return home to Wilmington.
Norman, who amuses himself fishing, reading and looking for jobs he is never going to apply for in the local newspaper, thinks he is getting his own way in everything he does. Not that that worries Ethel. She is happy to let
him think he is the cantankerous king of his own kingdom . . . while
playing him like the fish he goes off to catch whenever he can. The pair have superb timing throwing in one liners and asides like a seasoned double act who are easy and comfortable in each other's company. Amid all the quips and friendly fire though, there comes through a deep love and bond between a couple who have grown up and grown old together and it is to their credit that Johnson and Powers convince us they really are Norman and Ethel in the twilight days of a love affair. Norman sees himself as the strong one, apparently
in control of what remains of his life, the one who does not want a
crowd for his birthday – crowd being his daughter and her new boyfriend. Yet behind the bravado is a vulnerability, the
first signs that Norman's memory is failing, particularly when he rushes
back empty handed after going to pick strawberries because he had
forgotten where he was going and how to get there and that made him
frightened. He ran back to “where I am safe – where I am
still me”. It is a universal fear that haunts everyone as age starts to
run away from them. While there is a closeness between Norman and
Ethel there is distance between particularly Norman and daughter
Chelsea, played by Elizabeth Carling. Chelsea, at 42, has passed through
child bearing age without bearing children as Norman so delicately puts
it. She is the end of the Thayer line. After years of never seeing her her parents she
arrives with new boyfriend, dentist Bill Ray, played by Walsall actor
(and Behind The Arras reviewer) Tom Roberts, along with Bill's 14
year-old son Billy, played by Graeme Dalling, and persuades her parents
to look after Billy for a while, while she and Bill head off for a
holiday in Europe. A scene between Bill and Norman is one of the
highlights of Act 1 as Norman, as is his wont, tries to
deliberately mislead, misunderstand and mishear his way through their
conversation – particularly about sleeping arrangements - while Bill
points out he will be friendly and polite but won't be messed about. It
is at times very funny. BOND GROWING With Chelsea and Bill gone we see the bond
growing between Norman and Billy with the octogenarian perhaps seeing in
teenager Billy the son he never had and which he had always wanted,
something that had not been lost on Chelsea who had grown up trying to
please her father. Normal teaches Billy about fishing and the joys of reading while Billy teaches Norman about the language and the street-wise ways of youth - sucking face and all that, or kissing to me and you. When Chelsea returns, now as Mrs Ray
incidentally, she perhaps sees Billy having the sort of relationship she
had always wanted with her father but in a powerful scene first Ethel
tells her she cannot keep going on and on living in the past and
then there is a poignant reconciliation of sorts as she and Norman
perhaps see each other as they are and what they had become for the
first time. The play ends with Norman, having come too close
to death for comfort, ready to visit his daughter and new husband in
California but perhaps most of all looking to see Billy, the grandson he
thought he would never have, in a bond which is steadily growing
to bridge the 66 years between them. There are some classic lines, one particular
Brussels line worth the price of admission alone, as well as the
observation that “there is something to be said for a deviant lifestyle”
after Norman hears that a 97 year old lesbian in the small lakeside
community has died. Bearer of that news is Charlie the mailman, played by Kasper Michaels, the ex-boyfriend from childhood of Chelsea who still has feelings for her – thwarted middle aged love all accompanied by a gloriously eccentric laugh. It is a touching, gentle family story about
relationships, about love between old people, between parents and
children and between old and young. It is a simple story of human
emotions and what makes us who we are. At times it is very funny, at
times sad. It is beautifully paced with fine acting and sensitive
direction by Michael Lunney who also designed the convincing set. Lunney is the co-founder of Malvern's Middle
Ground Theatre Company which is coming up to its 25th year. The company
had one of my favourite plays of 2010 with Frankie & Johnny in the
Clair De Lune and this keeps the standard flying high. Roger Clarke On Golden Pond
runs to 04-02-12 at the Grand and has two other Midland dates on its
national tour opening next week on 06-01-12 for a week at Malvern and
later in the year it is at Lichfield Garrick, where Tom Roberts is
producer of the Rep incidentally, for a week starting 10-04-12.
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