James Earl Jones doesn’t so much play his role in “On Golden Pond” as shoulder his way through it. Big frame, big hands, big voice: As Norman Thayer, a cantankerous professor emeritus whose mind is starting to go, he jostles the action every time he speaks, or moves. His co-star Leslie Uggams takes a different approach, singing her way through the role of Norman’s devoted wife; a high clear melody to his rumbling, tumbling bass.

It’s not exactly beautiful, the music they make together in Ernest Thompson’s play, and not what you’d call exciting. Leonard Foglia’s revival at the Cort has a weird drifting quality. At moments, it grows funny or moving, then it slips out of focus. Timing doesn’t work in the production’s favor. It has opened in the same week as another happy/sad story about love, mortality, and hugging that began as a play, then became a film, and is now a play again (but, lacking any particular theatricality, might as well have stayed a film).

“On Golden Pond,” like “Steel Magnolias,” has its virtues, but this revival doesn’t hold together as well as its immediate predecessor and Broadway neighbor. Both have uneven material (at best) that’s somewhat redeemed by sharp actors. The difference: Where director Jason Moore managed to give “Magnolias” a consistent style and rhythm, this revival doesn’t achieve either.

Norman and Ethel Thayer have come to their lakeside summer home in Maine, possibly for the last time. He is retired from Penn, but is full of obnoxious comments, which she tolerates in good humor. “It’s me, you poop!” is her hello. Ray Klausen’s scenery – screen doors, hearth, comfy chairs – has no walls or ceiling, a fragmented image like a half-remembered dream. As Mr. Jones ambles around the space, his voice has a surprising knack for finding the microphones stashed here and there, which has sudden and dramatic consequences for the way he sounds. One minute he’s cute and cranky, the next he’s back to sounding like Darth Vader.

Norman is about to turn 80: That is one source of the Thayers’ summer fun. Another is a pending visit from their daughter, Chelsea, already grown and divorced. We are given to understand that Norman and Chelsea do not get along. She does not like his abrasive manner; he is a spit-and-vinegar old-timer who can’t bring himself to open up to her. Mr. Thompson deals with these relationships honestly, though not in a way that resonates.

Linda Powell is steady and engaging as Chelsea, doling out affection for mom and hostility to dad in just the right proportions. Observe, in the botched reconciliation between Chelsea and Norman on the porch, how completely focused on Mr. Jones she is: an impressive show of concentration.

Chelsea is accompanied by her new beau, Bill Ray. Watching his scenes with the Thayers, it occurs to me once again that Peter Francis James is a theatrical gyroscope: Set him to work in any situation, and the whole apparatus finds an equilibrium. He quivers convincingly in Mr. Jones’s presence, then finds the right level of polite defiance. (Their confrontation is the best thing in the show.) As Bill’s teenage son, Alexander Mitchell shows more of the fresh talent he displayed in last year’s “Raisin in the Sun.” He has real poise for one so young.

The production played the Kennedy Center last fall and has brought a frisson of novelty with it to New York. The actors playing the Thayer family, Bill, and his son are all black. Mr. Thompson didn’t write the play for black characters or actors, and, according to press accounts, hasn’t remodeled it with them in mind. Some minor revisions were undertaken – there’s still a new car smell about certain lines – but race doesn’t really affect the show. A good story is a good story, talent is talent, that’s that.

For the record, this is not an all black production, as a white actor plays Charlie the postman. Craig Bockhorn gives him a torqued-up clown’s cackle – an effective way to get a laugh, if not a remarkably subtle one. On the subject of trying too hard, Dan Moses Schreier’s score assaults the crowd with massed strings and woodwinds: It’s like being told to get teary at gunpoint.

For every clever bit of comedy Mr. Thompson weaves into the script, there’s something that clangs. Consider the loon – the noble, metaphorical loon – which carries a heavy thematic load. These rhapsodies lead Ms. Uggams, who is sensitive and lively in her best moments, to indulge in some highly wrought acting. There’s too much dissonance between her approach and the coarseness of Mr. Jones. He does well by Norman’s rambunctious humor and finds the moments of pathos. Watch his eyebrows rise during his late phone call with Chelsea.

The real heart of the show is his sheer presence. There seems to be so much life in Mr. Jones that the possibility of Norman’s no longer being around has a bewildering force. Already, as I write this, whole stretches of the play have dropped clear out of my memory; the sight of Mr. Jones has left a hazy after-image. He has been away from Broadway for 18 years. It should not be so long next time.

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