An e-mailer wrote last Friday that she wouldn't be reading my feature story about Bain Boehlke and Wendy Lehr performing in "On Golden Pond." She couldn't imagine anyone other than Henry Fonda or Katharine Hepburn playing Norman and Ethel Thayer.

Easily dismissed with a smile on Friday morning, this note snuck back into my mind after watching Boehlke and Lehr at the Jungle Theater that night.

In the 1981 film, Fonda's scratchy cynicism signaled Norman's underlying melancholy, his unspoken fear of advancing of frailty. Paired with Hepburn's flinty New England hardtack, the couple cut through the script's syrup like an astringent. The humor was hard won and in the bargain we sympathized with a man staring down his mortality.

At the Jungle, Boehlke's Norman is a joker, an insouciant card who shuffles idly and drops bon mots — at which he occasionally chuckles. Midway through the first act, Lehr's Ethel tells a friend that, "Norman is restless this summer. I don't know what's got into him." Really? Because we don't see an air of preoccupation or fidgety introspection, even a hint that dotage has thrown Norman off his game.

The punch line to this story is that if you read the script, it is Boehlke and not Fonda who seems closer to playwright Ernest Thompson's description of Norman — "boyish and peppery," and still full of humor. He's a cute curmudgeon — spry and sardonic. Lehr's Ethel is Minnesota nice, industrious in opening their cabin for the summer and just a little dotty.

This sticky and sentimental stuff can be charming if you are in the mood. And we are charmed by watching Boehlke and Lehr and appreciating their 50 years of stage partnership. Boehlke's set is a magnificent construction of a woodsy cabin, right down to the green-painted window frames. Properties designer John Novak — as always — has brilliantly dressed this masterwork.

All the pieces are there but Thompson's script reveals its cracks too easily at critical junctures. Norman and his daughter, Chelsea (a winning, vulnerable Jennifer Blagen), have long had a frosty relationship. Chelsea brings this to a head and in perhaps eight lines of glib dialogue, the two have resolved a lifetime of baggage and neither seems terribly moved.

Other key transactions do not land in the Jungle's staging, and these occasions caused me to wonder whether the director had cast a hard eye on these scenes. The answer, of course, is that he couldn't because the director was in those scenes. Boehlke does the work of two people — something he has done many times — and I don't think he gets away with it here.

"On Golden Pond" is not nearly great enough to simply jump in and start rowing. It needs an outsider with a vision and a willingness to dig beneath the treacle and find whatever emotional veracity Thompson brought to the table.

You likely will depart the Jungle with a warm coziness, some smiles, memories and loads of admiration for Boehlke and Lehr — two of the finest theater artists who have worked in this community. Yet, there was an unobserved opportunity here to contemplate human temporality and how we dodge its grasp before accepting the peace of each day we have left.

That would have been something to see.

Graydon.Royce@startribune.com • 612-673-7299