Roxy’s stages drama ‘On Golden Pond’ on film’s 40th anniversary
Forty years ago this December, the movie version of “On Golden Pond” was released, based on a successful play that was first staged in 1979.
Its stars, Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, both won Academy Awards for their roles, bittersweet since it was Fonda’s first Oscar for his final movie.
The two inimitable stars and their voice patterns are easily copied, which is something the actors playing the roles in Roxy’s Downtown’s version of “Golden Pond” are doing their best to avoid.
“There’s just no way to try to do Fonda or Hepburn,” said David Stone, who plays Norman Thayer.
“It’s just a bad choice,” added Deb Campbell, who plays Thayer’s wife, Ethel.
“It’s tough not to sound like Fonda sometimes when you’re being a curmudgeon,” Stone said. “And Hepburn was compassionate, but Deb is doing an excellent job reaching that level of pathos.”
Campbell said she will “chastise myself internally” if her voice inflections begin to resemble those of Hepburn.
Directed by Tom Frye, “On Golden Pond” begins next week and continues through June 6.
Stone and Campbell said the comedy-drama represents some of the best roles for well-seasoned actors.
“It’s a play both Deb and I are approaching, or damn near in my case, the age of the characters,” Stone said. “I know for myself there aren’t many roles left, juicy roles, for anyone in their 70s.”
She added, “When you’re in theater and you approach a certain age, you start thinking, ‘I wonder if I’m going to get an opportunity.’”
Both Stone and Campbell have directed the other in previous productions. She directed him in “Santaland Diaries” for Roxy’s and in Guild Hall Players’ “Our Town” in 2014, when they first met. Last year, he directed her in the one-woman show “Becoming Dr. Ruth.” But they had never been on stage together until now.
They are both Wichita theater veterans, with Stone stating in the cast program that he has last worked with Frye during the Johnson administration — “Lyndon, not Andrew,” Stone added.
The rest of the cast includes Lydia Harbutz as their daughter, Chelsea; Nathan Frock as Bill, Chelsea’s boyfriend; Leo Larson as Bill’s son; and Gilbert Pearce as the mailman.
“It’s a nice group of people, and I think it’s going to be a fun, touching show,” Stone said.
“It already feels like family,” Campbell added.
That family became its own bubble during rehearsals, taking all precautions to avoid contact early on. Larson, a theater student at Wichita Northwest, was the last to get the second coronavirus vaccine a week ago.
Even though the play maintains its late 1970s, early ‘80s setting, the pandemic does inform the production, Stone and Campbell say.
Norman and Ethel, they say, have not seen their daughter in eight years, similar to the long time now that family members have been apart.
“In many ways it dovetails with the kind of year we’ve had,” Campbell said. “We are struggling, we all know people who have suffered, if we have not suffered ourselves. We don’t know what the future brings, but we know one thing — that we’re unbelievably mortal.”
“On Golden Pond” rounds out the season for Roxy’s Downtown, which has committed to small-cast, largely non-musicals during the pandemic. For its next season, with the exception of July’s opener “Driving Miss Daisy,” all the productions will be musicals: “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Disaster!” “The Toxic Avenger,” “Away in the Basement: A Church Basement Ladies Musical,” “Five Course Love,” “The Color Purple,” “Bright Star” and “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.”
‘On Golden Pond’
When: May 6 to June 6; performances at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays
Where: Roxy’s Downtown, 412 ½ E. Douglas
Tickets: $30, available at 316-265-4400 or roxysdowntown.com
This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 5:01 AM.