On Golden Pond, Starring Jones and Carroll, Set for Three-Week Run at Kennedy Center

James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll will star in a new production of Ernest Thompson’s On Golden Pond for a three-week run at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. this fall.

Directed by Leonard Foglia, the show will play in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater from Tuesday, September 28 through Sunday, October 17. The press opening is set for Saturday, October 2 at 8pm. This production marks the first time that Jones and Carroll have worked together since they appeared in the 1974 film Claudine.

On Golden Pond is the story of retired professor Norman Thayer (Jones) and his wife Ethel (Carroll), who decide to spend one final summer at their family’s lakeside cottage in Maine. The couple’s estranged daughter Chelsea arrives with her fiancé’s troubled teenage son, planning to leave him with her parents. Thompson’s work has already served as a vehicle for the talents of such stars as Tom Aldredge and Frances Sternhagen (in the original Broadway production of 1979), Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn (in the 1981 film version), and Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews (in a 2001 live television broadcast).

James Earl Jones has starred on Broadway in Fences, Othello, The Great White Hope, and other plays; among his many film credits, he famously provided the voice of Darth Vader for the first three films of the Star Wars series. Carroll, who has had leading roles in the Broadway productions of House of Flowers, No Strings, and Agnes of God, is well known for her work in the TV series Dynasty, The Colbys, and Julia.