Dated ‘Love Letters’ sends timeless message of communication
Woodstock Independent
By Deborah Skozek
Let’s face it. With voice mail, e-mail,
text messaging and video and web
cameras, writing letters, much less
love letters, has gone the way of the
fountain pen and rotary phone. Recent
films and TV dramas have depicted
the bereaved listening to the
last voice mail or watching the last
video of their now dearly departed. Yet
A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” reminds
us of the need to communicate with
friends on every level, mind, body and
soul, and instructs us in how to maintain
and preserve lifelong friendships.
The Stage Left Café provides the
perfect venue for the touching, two character,
two-act play that takes place
“back in the day” as young folks are so
fond of saying. Two second-graders,
Melissa Gardner and Andrew
Makepeace Ladd III, begin a 50-year
correspondence. As white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants living on the East Coast in
1937, they inhabit a world of wealth
and privilege, yet experience the same
joys, doubts, lust, guilt, heartbreak,
jealousy, transitory success and ambivalence
we all encounter.
Although aging from 8 to 55 years
old in less than two hours poses enormous
difficulties, Shannon Mayhall
becomes the complicated and troubled
Melissa Gardner, using amazing facial
expressions, superb reactions and
nervous finger tapping. Matt Hallstein,
who confidently fills the Opera House
stage with his voice and presence,
seems unsure of how to create such a
long-lived character on a smaller scale
and in a more intimate setting. His
performance improves and rings true
as Andy nears middle age.
Even though the actors sit a foot
apart at the same table with only a
lamp separating them, they make the
distance between them palpable.
Beautifully balanced in terms of humor
and drama and authentically
worded, the letters reveal that in all
their travels and through all their
travails, Andy and Melissa have never
found anyone who knows them quite
as well as they know each other.
Children will no longer come across
ribbon-tied bundles of letters
Grandma sent Grandpa while he was
fighting overseas. Instead, they will
have to find her e-mail or voice mail
password to access her final and perhaps
secret missives to loved ones
and others.
Having my husband’s
loving voice or words sandwiched between
sales calls or spam is not the
same as holding and rereading the
now-yellowed love letters he sent me
more than 30 years ago. And whether
or not you believe that, go see “Love
Letters.” Then, take a few moments to
write someone you love a letter.
Shannon Mayhall and Matt Hallstein as Melissa and Andrew
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