On Golden Pond Play Analysis

The stage is dark. The audience shuffles and makes quiet chatter as they wait pseudo-patiently for the night’s show to begin. All at once the lights go up to a blinding brightness and a slow song stumbles from the speakers just before the actors step into the scene. On Golden Pond is a comedy about growing older, with jokes aimed at the mostly older audience members that left the crowd giggling and grinning. Even in its darker moments this play managed to keep a light easy air, giving it a happy and relaxed feeling, almost as if we too were at a summer home on a pond. On February 2nd, a friend and I enjoyed the production put on by Dalton ACT theater.
Norman Thayer is the main male character. He is a retired teacher and archetypal grumpy old man on
Each scene change is a change of a month in time and the couple stays from May to September with 3 scenes in Act 1 and 2 scenes in the second act. The lighting was quite simple and minimalistic. The stage was flooded brightly each act, only dimming between scenes to brighten back immensely. The lighting was white with no noticeable variations or shifts such as spotlights or mood lighting. There were only a couple of songs played, one that played as the opener, between acts and as the closing song and the other was a camp song that Ethel and her daughter sing whilst reminiscing over the past.
The play did not follow a storyline structure with rising action, climax and falling action because the only real moment of suspenseful crisis happened moments before the end of the play. It did employ a few moments of foreshadowing with pictures and mentions of the estranged daughter Chelsea before bringing the character in to further the story. On Golden Pond was a light-hearted, true-to-live comedy that stirred the whole theater with laughter and drew tensions high with short spikes of climatic moments. It was a very good play and worth