Expect Tears To Well Up From Civic’s ‘Golden Pond’

“On Golden Pond” Friday, Jan. 9, Spokane Civic Theatre

Using the misty eyes quotient, “On Golden Pond” is a rousing success.

I challenge you to make it through the ending of this Ernest Thompson play without having to at least dab your eyes. The sun is setting on the lake, the loons are calling, and Norman and Ethel Thayer are walking arm and arm out to Golden Pond, probably for the last time.

“On Golden Pond” is a reasonable success in other ways, too. It has the same humor, charm and astute observation of family relationships that we remember from the hit 1981 movie.

Of course, that movie starred Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, a tough pair to follow. Nobody should expect that level of acting in this show, although you just might get it from Ed Cornachio as Norman Thayer Jr.

Cornachio, retired head of the photography department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art-turned-amateur actor, is an ideal Norman Thayer. His Norman, like Fonda’s, is a relentless curmudgeon whose sharp tongue is often used as a weapon not only against the world but against those he loves most. He is sometimes racist, sometimes tactless and sometimes downright cruel. Yet Cornachio, like Fonda before him, convinces us that his bitter tongue is Norman’s only way of coping with the dread of getting old and feeble. As a man of his generation, he can’t just sit down and cry about it. So he lashes out.

But he does so with a great deal of wit. With sensitive direction by Charles Kenfield, even the bitterness is funny. In fact, the more bitter, the better. Cornachio gets some of his biggest laughs railing against Italians, lesbians and even the 13-year-old kid who comes to stay the summer, Billy Ray. It’s a credit to both Kenfield and Cornachio that the play never feels too full of bile.

If you want to see an actor at his best, carefully watch Cornachio as he talks on the phone toward the end of the second act. When he is speaking to his grown-up daughter, he is clipped and reserved. But when Billy Ray gets on the phone, Norman becomes animated, happy, almost boyish in his sheer joy. This play never comes out and tells us that young Billy Ray has rejuvenated Norman; instead, we see it and hear it in every fiber of his being.

The other performances are good but not quite to that level. Pamela E. Long is a loving and sympathetic Ethel, and her scenes with Norman toward the end are moving. Yet earlier in the play, she seemed to be a bit self-conscious; she was a bit too obviously “acting.” Her confidence and comfort level visibly increased as the play progressed.

Young Ryan Murphy was spunky and credible as the smart-aleck Billy Ray. He has plenty of stage presence and confidence.

Robin Kropff, Stephen S. Warner and Craig Rickett were all effective in smaller roles.

This show had a particularly lovely set - not the home itself but the evocative conifer-filled backdrop by Nik Adams. I could almost smell the balsam fir. The between-scenes music was particularly beautiful. Kenfield wrote this music himself (and, I assume, performed it). His simple motif evoked the sun on the lake, the wind through the pines and the pensive sound of a couple trying gracefully to grow old together.

, DataTimes