Norman Thayer Jr., approaching his 80th birthday, glumly recognizes that "me and my body are having a great race to see who can poop out first." Nonetheless he and his wife, Ethel, have arrived their summer home on Golden Pond in Maine, for their 48th, and what he is persuaded will be their last, visit.

Ethel, of a different persuasion, deftly fields the cantankerous comments of her spouse as she takes the dust covers off the furniture and rolls out the rugs, exactly as she had done, doubtlessly, for the last half a century. Her enthusiasm for life is still boundless. She collects the kindling for fires, picks wild strawberries and carries on conversations with the resident loons of the lake.

"I've met a new couple," she tells Norman. "They're a nice middle-aged couple, just like us."

"We're not middle-aged," he retorts. "No one lives to be 150."

This is the world Dreamweavers creates in its opening production of 2006, "On Golden Pond," where the idyllic world of summers at the lake is laced with unease, for her from the bugs, for him from the growing proximity of aging and death -- until a 13-year-old boy comes into the picture.

Billy arrives with the Thayer's estranged daughter, Chelsea on her first visit to the lake in eight years. He's the son of her newest boyfriend, Bill. Chelsea has all the baggage of her generation: In her 40s, she still manages to imply that her luckless relationships are somehow the fault of her parents: She had to fish with her father. She had to be on the swim team to please him. She plans to leave the kid with her parents, so she and the new boyfriend can go to Europe for a month.

Where does a play like this have to go except to the inevitable resolution? The delight of this production is that turns in an unexpected and touchingly life-affirming direction.

This is due in part to the richly witty script, but equally to the exceptional performances by the five-member cast. As the aging curmudgeon Norman, Tom Andrews turns in yet another stellar performance. He grouches his way around the stage, spitting out his vinegary observations, an intolerant, self-absorbed crank, and suddenly he is a vulnerable aging professor, terrified at the thought of losing his mental prowess. His transformation, right down to the change in the spring of his step, when he has a boy to fish, counsel, tease and tell what to read, is masterful.

Equally superb is Rose Marie Sweeney as Ethel. Putting up with Norman, she embodies that endlessly giving woman; chasing spiders with her broom, or calling to the loons, she's humanized by her own quirks and foibles. And when she reveals in flashes of emotion, depths of her love for the "old poop" as she calls Norman, it provides the emotional peaks of the play.

Victor Davis returns to the Dreamweavers stage for a touching and deftly realized part as Charlie Martin, the postman of Golden Pond, who cherishes an ongoing love for the difficult Chelsea. With his awe-shucks humor and down home twang, Davis is charming and nostalgic and nearly flawless.

Helen Jane Hearn takes on the difficult role of Chelsea, and captures the nervous intensity and confusion of an adult still caught in her childhood. She even manages to make what could be a clichd annoying character a likable and sympathetic human being. As her boyfriend, Bill Ray, the dentist, Robert Silva has a warmth and steadiness, and a necessary dose of good humor to deal with Norman.

Finally Krystal!, as she is listed in the playbill, is a thoroughly engaging young Billy. Precocious, as are most products of their parents' chaos, he adapts the plans that abandon him with strangers with an endearing open spirit. He is, as Ethel comments, "the best thing that has happened to Norman since Roosevelt," (although Norman's vocabulary will never be the same, she notes) but he also is for her, at long last, a grandson to bake Tollhouse cookies for -- that affirmation that life continues.

"On Golden Pond," moves languidly, like a summer day on the lake; it might not be until the end that the audience realizes it's been watching a love story, the real deal.

Directed by June Alane Reif, "On Golden Pond," is distinctly worth the trip, and a round of applause is due as well to Dey LP for helping to make these productions possible. Performances continue Feb. 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, and March 3 and 4. Tickets are $18, general, and $15 for students, military and groups of 10 or more.

For information and reservations, call 255-LIVE (5483) Show times are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. Doors open one hour before show time; seating one-half hour before show time.