The Broadview Heights Spotlights present

On Golden Pond

by Ernest Thompson

Directed by Jan Futhey

Produced by Gary Marton

Stage Managed by Karen Johnston

The Cast

Vince Delcalzo as Norman Thayer

Deb Sweat as Ethel Thayer

Mike Yonkura as Charlie Martin

Beth Lee as Chelsea Thayer Wayne

Manny Liotta as Billy Ray

Marc Dusini as Bill Ray

This is the love story of Ethel and Norman Thayer, who are returning to their summer home on Golden Pond for the forty-eighth year. He is a retired professor, nearing eighty, with heart palpitations and a failing memory--but still as tart-tongued, observant and eager for life as ever. Ethel, ten years younger, and the perfect foil for Norman, delights in all the small things that have enriched and continue to enrich their long life together.

They are visited by their divorced, middle-aged daughter and her dentist fiance, who then go off to Europe, leaving his teenage son behind for the summer. The boy quickly becomes the "grandchild" the elderly couple have longed for, and as Norman revels in taking his ward fishing and thrusting good books at him, he also learns some lessons about modern teenage awareness--and slang--in return. In the end, as the summer wanes, so does their brief idyll, and in the final, deeply moving moments of the play, Norman and Ethel are brought even closer together by the incidence of a mild heart attack.

Time, they know, is now against them, but the years have been good and, perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits.

Fans of the 1981 movie staring Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn are sure to love the Spotlights' intimate production.