Tony Award-winner Tom Bosley and TV and theatre veteran Michael Learned have been announced as replacements for Richard Chamberlain and Hayley Mills in the upcoming national tour of Ernest Thompson's On Golden Pond.
After Chamberlain withdrew for personal reasons, it was decided that both lead roles should be recast. Bosley and Learned will be joined by Craig Brockhorn, who played Charlie the mailman in the recent Broadway revival (upon which the tour is based).
Leonard Foglia will return to direct, and more casting will be announced soon. On August 22nd, the tour will kick off at the Ordway Center in Saint Paul, MN; the tour will last through March of 2007.
In the show, "retired New England professor and lovable curmudgeon, Norman Thayer, Jr., and his spirited wife, Ethel, decide to spend one final summer at their family's lakeside cottage in Maine. They are soon interrupted by the arrival of their daughter Chelsea, who, en route to a European vacation, leaves behind her fiancé's young son. Colliding generations soon forge common ground," according to the
Of Golden Pond website.
Bosley, best known to TV audiences for his work on "Happy Days," won a Tony Award for his performance in the title role of
Fiorello! Other Broadway credits include
Cabaret, Beauty and the Beast, Catch Me If You Can and
Nowhere To Go But Up.Learned is also familiar to TV viewers from her days on "The Waltons." She has appeared on Broadway in
Gore Vidal's The Best Man, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Loves of Anatol and
The Three Sisters.The revival, starring
James Earl Jones and
Leslie Uggams, ran in summer of 2005. Its creative team--including set designer Ray Klausen, costume designer Jane Greenwood, lighting designer Brian Nason and sound designer/original music composer Dan Moses Schreier--will return to work on the tour. Originally a hit on Broadway in 1979,
On Golden Pond inspired a popular film starring Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda.
For more information, visit
www.goldenpondonbroadway.com.
