About the Play:

On Golden Pond has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female/Female Scenes and Male/Male Scenes.

On Golden Pond is a full-length comedy by Ernest Thompson. A funny and warmly perceptive study of a spirited elderly couple facing their twilight years. Ethel and Norman Thayer return to their summer home on Golden Pond for their 48th year. When they are visited by their daughter and her family the problems of the generation gap, and the possibilities opened up by the bridging of that gap, are explored. On Golden Pond is a work of rare simplicity and beauty that introduced a significant playwright to American theatre. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

On Golden Pond 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 fiancé, 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. In the end Norman, Ethel and the audience will hope that perhaps another summer on Golden Pond still awaits. Presented to great critical and popular acclaim first off then on Broadway, audiences on six continents have been able to relate to the themes of family relationships, marriage, generations, mortality creating a universal appeal for these engaging, flawed and believable characters.

On Golden Pond premiered in 1978 at the Hudson Guild Theatre off-off-Broadway then moved to the Apollo Theatre and ran on Broadway for more than 400 performances, and went on to become a successful film in 1981. The play has become an American theatrical classic, translated into 30 languages and produced in more than 40 countries. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is still an enormously popular choice for school and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male, 1 boy

What people say:

"On Golden Pond is a work of rare simplicity and beauty, and in Thompson our theatre has found a fresh new voice." — New York Daily News

"…a rare and memorable theatrical experience…." — Variety

"What courage it must have taken for Mr. Thompson in the 1970s to write a play with so much affection in it." — The New Yorker

About the Playwright:

Ernest Thompson is an American writer, actor, and director. He is known as the author of the play On Golden Pond, which he wrote at the age of twenty-eight. It went on to become a hit 1981 film starring Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda. Ernest Thompson won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1982, as well as awards from the Golden Globes and the Writers Guild of America.