Love Letters - Chronicles of an Unusually Remarkable Relationship

 

          You’d think that a play in which two actors sit at desks, never make eye contact and read a series of letters to one another wouldn’t work dramatically.

But then remember the continuing popularity of Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett’s two hander that became a cornerstone of absurdist theater. Or consider “My Dinner with Andre, a two-character cinematic comedy-drama where an interesting dialogue at a Manhattan restaurant fills the screen with pithy thoughts for 111minutes.

I’ll have to admit I was skeptical about sitting through A R Gurney’s Love Letters. Would I be tortured by another lightweight sappy rom-com or something ready for adaption for the Hallmark Channel? Would I squirm in my seat for 90 minutes of mushy tedium? Turns out not in the least!

Zach Wyatt and his real-to-life wife, Tammy portray Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, two characters who meet in grade school. Their first written contact comes in the form of a birthday invitation and its acceptance. Unfortunately, their first attempts, notes passed in class, are intercepted by their teacher. Their punishment – writing “I will not write notes in class” so many times their little hands , if I remember right from my own childhood experience, grow tired and achy. 

The reward – a life time of epistolary back and forths that go on for another 50 years.

The playwright does a great job pulling the audience into the lives of the two characters who sit at separate desks facing forward into the audience at the intimate Carnegie Stage in Carnegie. Closeness counts here as we get to watch not only the actor reading his or her letter but the visual response of the receiver. To me, getting the right facial expression down pat must be one of the most difficult challenges of the performance. Thankfully, both actors pull this feat off well.

Gurney’s remarkable achievement gathered such acclaim that the 1989 play got a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nomination. Since its debut, it’s been performed across the U.S. and has even ventured overseas.

The play opens with the characters as children. and the actors do a good job delivering their lines in childlike voices. Even at this early age, we see signs of personality traits that will accompany them through life and grow ever denser.

Andrew is the more thoughtful, more disciplined of the two. As Melissa, Tammy comes from a wealthy family, and although emotionally neglected by her parents, has a certain witty spontaneousness and self-confidence that Andrew lacks. This makes for a comfortable balance, a personality yin and yang that proves enjoyably watchable.

We follow along as they pair move into adolescence and head off to different schools, all the while keeping up the letter writing that Andrew loves but Melissa hates. For her, a phone call would suffice, but Andrew insists on keeping up the written correspondence. To continue their unusual relationship, she acquiesces. 

By the end of act one, we’ve experienced their relationship go through jalousies, annoyances, emotional give and takes, just as they begin their entrance into adulthood. At this point, as an audience member, I wasn’t sure of what the core their unusual bond really was. Was it platonic, erotic, mere friendship, symbiotic or the growth of an initial encounter that neither wanted to relinquish.

Throughout the play, Melissa has most of the comic lines and retorts. Andrew gives their relationship the stability they both need to get them through Melissa’s artsy, free-spirited disposition. Andrew’s disciplined, pragmatism leads him, step by step, to a predictable marriage (but not to Melissa), three sons and a successful law and political career.

Melissa, on the other hand, is ungrounded. Life and her finances  enable her to create art in Florence, Italy, then travel to Paris, New York and Los Angeles, where her work is exhibited in galleries. But all is not rosy. Along the way, she suffers from alcohol abuse and spends time in upscale rehab centers. Emotionally, she unravels.

Interestingly, the actors actually met themselves through a series of written letters. The outline of how they met and carried on through their written communications is explained on the back of the theater program where Zach and Tammy both get to tell their side of the story. Also interesting is the fact that the tied package of letters shown on their respective decks in the play are their actual love letters.

True to the playwright’s suggestion, the set is minimal. Each desk reflects the character’s persona, and set designers Ed and Elaine Cassidy provide enough visual stimulation to keep the eye and imagination enthused.

Lighting designer, Forest Trimble, knows when and how to raise or dim the brightness on the stage effectively and at appropriate times. As the director, Ken Gargano shows remarkable skill in conducting the tempo and timing of the dialogue, allowing the playwright’s cross references to previous love letters in the narrative to have an understandable lucidity, one that neatly ties the scrip  together.

While antic Melissa seems to get more than her share of the play’s humor, Zach gets he chance to really shine with his play ending monologue. It’s something that may make some of the more sensitive souls in the audience reach for their handkerchiefs and tissues.

Love Letters, a Ken Gargaro production,  is at the Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main Street in Carnegie, for a final performance tomorrow evening, Saturday, Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, go to https://www.carnegiestage.com/.