Fine acting couple visit a faded "Golden Pond"

The treasured Seattle acting couple Clayton and Susan Corzatte have been refining their rapport (offstage and on) for 50 years. No wonder they slip so gracefully and engagingly into the roles of Norman and Ethel Thayer — the scrappy but devoted New England couple sketched by Ernest Thompson in his 1979 Broadway comedy "On Golden Pond."

Now if only "On Golden Pond" itself had matured half so spryly as the stars of its Village Theatre revival.

Directed by Jeff Steitzer, the production lands plenty of laugh lines. And its cast is well rounded out by Jeanne Paulsen and Jim Gall as the Thayers' grown-up daughter, Chelsea, and her fiancé, Bill, and Michael Moore as Bill's adolescent son, Billy.

But even with its barrel of one-liners, the show's first act droops. And in the second, the schmaltz-o-meter rises.

No wonder, apart from a recent Broadway revival starring James Earl Jones, that "On Golden Pond" the play has long been overshadowed by the two-hankie 1981 movie adaptation.

That sentimental hit has Oscar-honored turns by Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn, at the twilight of their careers. And it's the only film in which Fonda appears with his controversial daughter, Jane Fonda.

Stripped of such celebrity and celluloid gloss, the Village's "On Golden Pond" feels thin and predictable, like a machine-tooled patchwork quilt. Rather than take a hard look at family dynamics and fears of aging, the play aims to enfold you in a neatly-stitched wrap of psychological bromides, grumpy wisecracks and heart-tugging moments.

It opens as the Thayers arrive in Maine for their annual summer vacation, in an old family cabin that's almost posh in set designer Norm Spencer's well-appointed rendering.

A retired professor of 79, whose main form of social discourse is withering sarcasm, Norman is getting more caustic as his short-term memory erodes and sense of mortality deepens. His upbeat wife, Ethel (who calls her mate "you poop"), is getting worried about him, as is the couple's buffoonish Maine mailman (Eric Ray Anderson).

Norman's despair, and grumpy strategy for keeping emotion at bay, are well-observed in the script and in Clayton Corzatte's winningly natural and unfussy portrayal, opposite Susan Corzatte's equally no-nonsense Ethel.

Less believable is how quickly an amazingly agreeable, "instant" grandson chases away Norman's glooms. And how easily the curmudgeon reconciles with his resentful daughter, and comes to terms with his inevitable fate.

Snappier pacing might lessen some of the clichés here. But can't the Village find a zestier work for its annual nonmusical slot than "On Golden Pond," or last year's "Steel Magnolias"? Maybe it's time to leave such stale fare to local community stages, and pick material that actors of the Corzattes' quality can really sink their teeth into.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com