OTA Reader's Theater:
On Golden Pond
February 28th - March 2nd
Reader's Theatre
OTA’s Readers Theatre Club is a brand new addition to OTA’s programming as of 2025. On Golden Pond will be their grand premiere production. Under the leadership of Cathy Dodd, the group meets twice a month and is open to the public to anyone who wants to be a part of it. Readers Theatre is a paired down version of a production where there are no sets, costumes, or props and the performers read directly from the script. It is designed to be a focus on the words of and story of the playwright.
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.
Friday & Saturday Performances at 7:00pm
Sunday Matinee at 2:00pm
Tickets: $15 Adults, $10 Students