Nostalgia at the lake: On Golden Pond at the Mayfield, a review

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

“How does it feel to turn eighty?” a 15-year-old kid demands of Norman Thayer, the curmudgeonly retired English prof/ octogenarian wiseacre in On Golden Pond. “Twice as bad as turning 40,” he says without missing a beat.

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Age is a subject that comes up constantly in On Golden Pond, along with the passing of the years, the shrinking of the future and its ceding to the past, mortality. Ernest Thompson’s sentimental, lovably durable 1979 family comedy/drama, even better known for the 1982 film starring Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, is a familiar occupant of stages everywhere — including the Mayfield where it’s now ensconced for the first time in decades. And it’s as well-worn, overstuffed, and rustic as the cottage at the lake where Norman and Ethel, his wife of half a century, have retreated for the last 48 summers.

This year that annual summer idyll feels somehow different, thinks Ethel. Norman, the play’s bulwark against the sentimental, is as irascible than ever. But there are more references to the infirmities of age, including a short-term memory that’s fraying a bit around the edges. Mirrors, he says, are useful so he can check to make sure he isn’t fading. Books should be short, “something I can finish before I’m finished myself.”

The arrival of their estranged, perpetually aggrieved 40-something daughter Chelsea who hasn’t visited in years, her latest boyfriend Bill, and Bill’s cocky, disaffected 15-year-old son Billy, is the catalyst for such drama as there is in the play. The lovebirds are dumping Billy at the cottage for the summer while they go to Europe. Will the intergenerational friction resolve itself into a golden glow in the Thayers’ sunset years? Hmm. Let your imagination run riot.

The Mayfield production, directed expertly by Kate Ryan and led by Glenn Nelson as Norman and Maralyn Ryan as Ethel, both excellent as a vintage married couple, is what happens when you unleash a batch (a wealth? a flight?) of deluxe actors and a top-drawer creative team on a play that’s pretty thin, and in places downright threadbare. A play that depends, more than it should have to, on their lustre.

Ryan’s cast reassembles the trio of actors, Lora Brovold, Collin Doyle, and Maralyn Ryan, who were memorable in Workshop West’s premiere of Conni Massing’s Dead Letter last month. As Chelsea, who’s always been at loggerheads with Norman (she never calls him Dad), Brovold has the kind of warmth about her that makes you forget that the reason for the estrangement — this is not a spoiler alert —  is that Norman would have preferred a boy (what?) who’d have been a swimming champ (what?). The actor even negotiates a clunky scene, inserted late in the play, where Chelsea lists all the things that were wrong with her childhood (what?) by way of explaining things, in retrospect. Her mother wisely tells her to grow up. The inevitable rapprochement scene is a true test of actorly mettle, and Brovold is up for it.

Doyle plays the mail delivery person Charlie, notable for his cheery laugh and his hokey colloquialisms (“holy mackinolli” which I’m sure I’ve spelled wrong), who, touchingly, has held onto his childhood crush on Chelsea, she of the rotten childhood. And to this collection of characters, the play adds Ian Leung, first-rate in a tiny, thankless role as the dentist boyfriend Bill who’s the victim of Norman’s relentless “comic” badgering. Ah, and a notable performance by the charismatic young actor Will Brisbin as the teenage Billy.

The latter negotiates scenes of dated badinage with a kind of ironic aplomb, and the relationship that develops between Billy and Norman, beneficial to both, is one of the delights of the evening. You find yourself wishing the play let them go fishing together more often.

To return to the leads, Nelson’s performance finds the edgy combination of quick wit, acid, and fear that drive Norman through long scenes of hanging out at the lake. And he has a convincing partnership with Esther, a lovely performance from Maralyn Ryan as the attentive but increasingly exasperated wife, who’s finding herself supervising the old coot more and more. She’s the straight man, so to speak, to the comedy that is Norman. Both are entirely watchable and winsome, even when almost nothing is happening.

In short, director Ryan has the huge plus of luxury casting for this production of On Golden Pond. And the atmospheric setting positively exudes nostalgia thanks to Daniel vanHeyst’s stunning wood-ribbed lakeside cottage set, Trent Crosby’s lighting that evokes time passing better than the script does, and Brian Raine’s sound design.

Like the harvest gold velour couch that’s gathering dust at your own cottage, the springs have poked through this play. Still, that’s no reason not to go to the lake and play Monopoly and listen to the loons call. It’s fun to see what fine actors, direction, and design can do with a chestnut.

REVIEW

On Golden Pond

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre

Written by: Ernest Thompson

Directed by: Kate Ryan

Starring: Glenn Nelson, Maralyn Ryan, Lora Brovold, Collin Doyle, Ian Leung, Will Brisbin

Running: through July 28

Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca