‘Golden’ roles: Lead performers will be key in Interplayers’ production

Most people are familiar with “On Golden Pond” from its definitive version: the 1981 Oscar-winning movie starring Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fonda.

Before that, this Ernest Thompson play had a healthy life on Broadway in 1979 and 1980, with Tom Aldredge and Frances Sternhagen.

Later, after the movie vastly expanded its name recognition, “On Golden Pond” became what the New York Times called a “gold mine,” with hundreds of regional, amateur and foreign productions.

This is the kind of play, as the movie proved, that relies heavily on the appeal, charisma and power of its lead performers.

The Times’ Alvin Klein wrote in 1999 that the play itself contains 10 minutes of plot and two hours of filler, but that “vintage actors can fill it all in with the magic of performing or persona.”

Now Interplayers Theatre in Spokane is tackling it in a production directed by Maynard Villers, and featuring J.P. O’Shaughnessy and Maria Caprile in the Fonda-Hepburn roles.

Caprile is one of Spokane’s top actresses, having appeared notably in “Wit,” “Gypsy” and “The Music Man.”

She is probably best known as a director – she just finished up “The Christmas Schooner” at the Spokane Civic Theatre – and as the head of the Spokane Children’s Theatre.

O’Shaughnessy has handled a number of big dramatic roles with aplomb, including parts in David Auburn’s “Proof” at the Spokane Civic Theatre and “Humble Boy” at the Actor’s Repertory Theatre.

They’ll portray Ethel and Norman Thayer, who have retired to their summer home in Maine as they approach their 80s.

Norman, a former English professor, is what you might call a handful – he’s outspoken, opinionated and ornery. He also senses that his faculties are fading and he rails, Lear-like, at approaching death.

Ethel is a happier and more optimistic character and is, more or less, a saint for putting up with Norman. She tries to get him to cheer up and get his mind off of his morbid thoughs.

When their daughter, Chelsea, arrives with her new boyfriend, a dentist, and his surly 13-year-old kid, Ethel urges Norman to bond with the boy. As the play progresses he becomes like the son Norman never had.

Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote in 2005 that the play “revels in the nudging joys of grumpy old codgers saying mildly risqué things.” He also said, less generously, that it resembles a Hallmark greeting card and has accumulated “highbrow snarls of disgust,” along with “a devoted popular following.”

Yet he conceded that its continuing popular appeal stems from the fact that it is “sentimental, cute and tender.”

It is also, undeniably, a fine vehicle for actors. That was proved by Fonda and Hepburn, and more recently by James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams in a 2005 Broadway revival.

“You’ll experience the sympathetic ache that comes from sensing another human’s awareness of his own mortality,” Brantley said of that revival.

In the Interplayers production, Caprile and O’Shaughnessy will be joined by Olivia Brownlee in the role of Chelsea. Other cast members include Gary Pierce, Jared Alme and director Villers.

Paintings by watercolorist Fabian Napolsky will be exhibited in the lobby throughout the run.