Delaware Gets Jones & Uggams in Golden Pond

The production of Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond, which is currently running at the Kennedy Center, will play another regional engagement at the DuPont Theatre in Wilmington, Delaware before a possible New York bow, according to a production spokesperson. The show, starring James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams, is scheduled to play in Delaware from October 22 through October 31.

In the play, the loons are back again on Golden Pond and so are Norman Jones, a retired professor, and Ethel Thayer Uggams, who have had a summer cottage there since early in their marriage. This summer their daughter Chelsea Linda Powell--whom they haven't seen for years--feels she must be there for Norman's birthday. She and her fiancé Peter Francis James are on their way to Europe the next day but will be back in a couple of weeks to pick up her fiancé's son Alexander Mitchell. When she returns, Chelsea is married and her stepson has the relationship with her father that she always wanted.

On Golden Pond, directed by Leonard Foglia, is scheduled to run at the Kennedy Center through October 17. Variety's Paul Harris wrote of the production: "With his famous voice often at full pitch, Jones offers an especially commanding presence as the gruff and forgetful codger who lumbers around the lakeside cottage seeking opportunities to complain. But his impish and caring sides are meticulously and delightfully revealed by the arrival of a young fishing companion. Uggams is a more-than-capable match as the family's stern but loving matriarch. She makes it seem as if we are eavesdropping on a 40-year-plus relationship, while watching this remarkably together woman cope so stoically with her husband's decline. Leonard Foglia's sensitive direction allows the play's many key moments to sparkle and the action to flow smoothly around Ray Klausen's rustic cabin set."