NORWAY — “On Golden Pond” opens OHMPAA’s 30th season on June 18. This beloved play is filled with humor and tenderness, and it has given theater-goers across the country and around the world a true-to-life taste of Maine.

Ethel and Norman Thayer are returning to their lakeside cottage for their 48th summer. With welcoming calls from the loons on Golden Pond, the aging couple’s memories and solid bonds provide the foundation for dealing with unresolved issues with their visiting daughter, Chelsea.
For Sally Jones, who plays Ethel in this production, there couldn’t be a better play for this third decade of musicals, comedies and dramas by OHMPAA (Oxford Hills Music and Performing Arts Association).
“Golden Pond is very much a character,” Jones said. “It controls all that the characters do.”
She noted that playwright Ernest Thompson’s own family, and their summers on a Maine lake, was the basis for his 1979 play. She added that there’s always a Golden Pond “very near wherever you want it to be.”
Tom Littlefield, a popular veteran of OHMPAA shows, plays Norman Thayer. Norman, who is celebrating his 80th birthday, is humorous and crotchety, while Ethel, 10 years younger, is exuberant and full of life. Their bickering is funny and their relationship is endearing.
Other major roles in the production are Chelsea, their divorced, middle-aged daughter, played by Kathryn Gardner; Bill, her fiancé from California, played by Dan Rennie; and Bill’s 13-year-old son, played by Owen Orlando, who is left with Norman and Ethel when the couple goes off to Europe. Billy becomes the grandchild Norman and Ethel never had.
Jones said Orlando is “a promising young thespian who has graduated from performing in OHMPAA’s children’s shows to performing on the adult stage.”
Michael Newsom plays Chelsea’s childhood friend, Charlie, the lovable Mainer who delivers the mail by boat. Gardner and Newsome have appeared together in other OHMPAA shows, and are married in real life. They played romantic leads in “Almost, Maine” and “The Road to Eden’s Ridge,” an original musical written for the OHMPAA stage by Sally Jones in collaboration with composer Steve Jones (no relation).
This production of “On Golden Pond” is directed by Jane Whitney Riseman, assisted by Julie Poland Middleton. An acclaimed 1981 film brought Academy Awards to Henry Fonda, Kathrine Hepburn for best actor and actress, and to Jane Fonda, best supporting actress.
Noting that the public is so familiar with the movie, Jones said the whole OHMAA team felt that they wanted to present their own interpretation of the play.
“The characters developed as we worked on it,” she said.
Jones recalled OHMPAA’s 30-year history in which she said about 93 shows have been presented. Productions in the early 1900s were at the historic Paris Hill Academy. That small space, utilized only in the summer, led OHMPAA to move its shows in 2002 to the second floor of the Norway Grange Hall.
“We have really created a theatre,” Jones said. The Grange hall now has air conditioning and an elevator. The stage and storage spaces allow OHMPAA to present a full range of shows from comedies, dramas and revues with half a dozen performers to major musicals with large casts, such as “Man of La Mancha.”

Performance dates for “On Golden Pond” are June Thursday – Saturday, 18, 19, 20, and 25, 26, 27 at 7:30 p.m. with two Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. on June 21 and 28 at the Norway Grange, 15 Whitman St., Norway. Opening-night-only tickets on June 18 are $5 for all. All other night performance tickets are $10 for adults, and $8 for students/children 18 and under.
Tickets are available at Books-n-Things, 430 Main St, Norway, call 739-6200.
FMI , go online to www.OHMPAA.com.