ON GETTING OLD `ON GOLDEN POND' (PLAY REVIEW)

For starters, Norman Thayer Jr. is not a people person. He's ornery and combative. And as he prepares to celebrate his 80th birthday at the family summer retreat on Golden Pond, he's also afraid. He's losing the faculties that have kept most of the world at bay these many years.

The River City Players' new production of "On Golden Pond" nicely captures the fears and sorrows of growing old as well as the possibilities for redemption.

The play opens tonight at Mark Anthony's Restaurant in the Plaza Galleria. Tonight's performance will be at 7:30 and will not include dinner. The performances Friday and Saturday will be in a dinner theater format. The cash bar will open at 6, followed by dinner at 6:30 and the performance at 8.

Sunday's performances will begin at 2 p.m. following at 1:30 p.m. by a buffet brunch.

Most audiences have the movie version of "On Golden Pond" as their primary reference. But Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn are gone and Jane Fonda is riding horses in Montana.

The River City Players and first-time director Steve Ruppel do a very good job of creating fresh characters.

The stiff-moving, tight-jawed Norman, played by Southeast Missourian reporter Jeffrey Jackson, and his younger wife Ethel (Elaine Carlson) have spent 48 summers in their time capsule on Golden Pond.

They're growing old together, but the growing isn't always graceful. Norman, in Jackson's adroit portrayal, has seen glimpses of the end and he isn't pleased.

"Why can't you just pick berries and catch fish and read books and enjoy this sweet, sweet time?" Ethel laments.

The assured Carlson is a comforting presence as Ethel, who at one point says to Norman, "You're the sweetest man in the world and I'm the only one who knows it."

Along comes their daughter Chelsea (Megwyn Sanders) with her fiance Bill (Ruppel) and Bill's 13-year-old son Billy (David Koeller).

One of the best scenes occurs when Bill confronts the older man over his querulous ways. The timing between Ruppel and Jackson is splendid.

Sanders is fine as Chelsea, projecting a sunnier presence than Fonda brought to the role but erupts in her climactic scene with her father.

In his first acting role, David Koeller acquits himself well as the young boy whose bond with the old man perhaps does more than anything else to bring Norman out of his death spiral.

Charlie, the affable mailman who was Chelsea's summer boyfriend when she was growing up, is played winningly by Shawn Smith. Smith and Sanders really do seem like old friends reliving their salad days on Golden Pond.