James Earl Jones in On Golden Pond

The review of On Golden Pond (currently on Broadway, starring James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggams) gives me chills.

What power. What grace. And again: I would like to put this review in my ever-growing file of Why Ben Brantley Is a Great Theatre Critic.

A couple of quotes to give you a glimpse:

NO one can just say no like James Earl Jones. No, of course, is universally recognized as a small word of immense potential power. But you will not fully appreciate how affirmative a simple no can be until you hear Mr. Jones speak it — which he does again and again — in Leonard Foglia’s surprisingly fresh revival of Ernest Thompson’s ”On Golden Pond,” which opened last night at the Cort Theater, also starring Leslie Uggams.

The question may be as innocuous as ”You want a glass of milk, Norman?” or ”You’re a baseball fan, huh?” The answer is always the same intimidating ”N-O-O-O-O!!!” Well, typography can hardly be expected to capture a drawn-out, deep-purple note that would fit right into the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth.

I absolutely LOVE the entire concept of this production, and also love that they got such powerhouses to play it. It’s a bit strange casting, if you think about it: James Earl Jones as the cantankerous on-the-edge-of-doddering Norman … but that’s the beauty of it. James Earl Jones can do ANYthing – it’s just that he is rarely given the opportunity to try.

More:

Even Hepburn and Fonda, being quiveringly and importantly sincere, didn’t make me a fan of ”On Golden Pond,” which revels in the nudging joys of grumpy old codgers saying mildly risqué things and the misty truisms of family therapy guides. Placing a powerhouse like Mr. Jones in the quaint Maine summer retreat where the Thayer family spends a season of healing seemed the equivalent of putting a German shepherd into a Chihuahua-size doghouse.

Yet rather than make his surroundings feel small and artificial, Mr. Jones’s natural grandeur forces the play to find room for his sweeping emotional breadth. And it is telling that while I initially regarded Ray Klausen’s set as a blown-up 50-cent scenic postcard, by the show’s end it felt like a real home, with all the ambivalence that implies.

Now that tells me it is a damn fine production. A theatre set ends up feeling like home? Like a ‘real home’? What? When does THAT happen?

More:

Most important, as he fences with the shadow of death, joking robustly about his imminent demise, Mr. Jones’s Norman makes you acknowledge how often comedy is rooted in fear.

That brings tears to my eyes.

And lastly:

But it is Mr. Jones’s Norman who is the primal force by which all the other characters must define themselves. Norman has constructed an elaborate defense system, which exaggerates natural anger and exasperation to operatic proportions as a way of dealing with the death he knows is just around the corner.

What’s so especially moving is how Mr. Jones insists you glimpse existential terror beneath the bluff bravado. Even as Norman is saying something savagely cutting or clever, a sudden slackening of the jaw, drawing back of the shoulders or glazing of the eyes betrays his inescapable sense of a waiting darkness.

There is a moment toward the end when Norman lies prone on the floor, unmoving and to all appearances unbreathing. Yet somehow Mr. Jones positively vibrates with all the levels of the character he has drawn before. That’s something only a bona fide star of the stage can do. Such creatures are few these days. ”On Golden Pond” provides a rare and welcome opportunity to catch one in peak form.

Wow. How fantastic. Might have to try to see this one, if I can. You don’t have to convince me that James Earl Jones is able to “positively vibrate with all the levels of the character he has drawn before” – This is what I feel in ALL his work. But to see him do it live? Now that would be a thrill.

(Full review here)