ON GOLDEN POND at The Sherman Playhouse

The Sherman Players will open their 2023 season with ON GOLDEN POND, written by Ernest Thompson and directed by Jane Farnol. The play will open on Friday, April 21 and run four weekends through May 13th at the Sherman Playhouse.

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 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 and, perhaps, another summer on Golden Pond still awaits.

ON GOLDEN POND premiered on Broadway in 1979 featuring Tom Aldredge and Frances Sternhagen.  It was adapted in 1981 as an Oscar winning movie starring Katherine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda. A revival came to Broadway in 2005 with James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams.

Sherman Players president Steve Stott said “On Golden Pond is the perfect 2023 Season opener for the Sherman Players.  Jane Farnol returns to the Playhouse with this funny, poignant and ever-popular play to lead us out of our Connecticut Winter and into a gloriously warm Maine Summer.” Director Jane Farnol says she’s “delighted to be back at Sherman helming this lovely play with a wonderful cast and superb Playhouse production team.”

The cast of ON GOLDEN POND features Tim Breslin (Litchfield), Dandy Barrett (Danbury), Rufus de Rham (Kent), Jack Hoyt (Brookfield), Stacy-Lee Frome, Jimmy Collins and Lynn Nissenbaum (all New Milford). 

ON GOLDEN POND runs April 21, 22, 28, 29, May 5, 6, 12 and 13 at 8:00 p.m. on Fridays & Saturdays. There will be two 2:00 p.m. Sunday matinees on April 30 and May 7. Tickets are $24 for adults and $12 for students. On Thursday, April 20, all patrons are invited to attend a "Half-Price Preview Night" at 8:00 p.m., where tickets at the door are only $12. Students may see any performance for $12 if they carry a valid student ID.

Reservations can be made online at shermanplayers.org or by calling the box office at (860) 354-3622.

The Sherman Playhouse is a non-Equity theatre company located at 5 Route 39 North (next to the firehouse) in Sherman, CT.

Authors

• Ernest Thompson

Tony Awards and Nominations for ON GOLDEN POND