What’s love got to do with it?
It’s a lot more than what you’d expect when two people sit on a dark stage and take turns reading “love letters” they’ve written to each other over 50 years.
Is that what they are?
Based on all the actors who have starred in these roles, this is a coming classic with a suggested subtitle which could be “The One Who Got Away.”
Upon first approach, Providence Players’ stage seemed rather hum-drum, two chairs at a table with propped books and water bottles nearby, but as the script grows and becomes more seductive, so did the set and the characters played by Jayne L. Victor as “Melissa” and Michael Donahue as “Andy.”
Director Tina Hodge Thronson draws the exaggerated emotions from each actor to evoke lives past and lost, a conversation between two longtime friends whom Victor and Donahue portray in strong, realistic performances, demonstrating their theatrical experiences. (I always count myself lucky to live in an area blessed with many talented performers like these two.)
The couple (who are not really “a couple,”) begin the show with their correspondence as youngsters in second grade who grow up and continue their letter writing, describing their schooling, careers, marriages, children and more.
Their lives in letters!
While facing the audience but not looking at the audience, they read aloud, pausing when the other doesn’t answer.
When Andy infrequently looks up from his reading, he turns his head left and looking as if in a trance, studies the curtain. Meanwhile, Melissa grimaces, holds her face; she is angry, disgusted, frustrated a lot of the time, but it’s not all serious stuff. This show’s got humor and the audience enjoyed those moments.
As the show progresses, playwright A.R. Gurney (1930-2017) molds Melissa, who is an artist from a wealthy family, into the more demanding personality of the two: the unhappiest, the shrillest (surprise!) who spouts harsh adult language (I don’t think “Andy” utters one foul word) while, surprise! Andy, the eventual successful attorney and politician, never loses his cool.
He becomes the pursued, unlike at the beginning of the Andy/Melissa “friendship.”
His marriage is somewhat satisfying, while Melissa’s is the opposite several times over, a copy of her mother’s many “couplings.”
Fiction, “they” say, is not fiction, and the playwright weaves some of his own background in the story like he wrote in most of his plays. These “love letters” are more intriguing than the ones heard in Ken Ludwig’s “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” which made its debut in Washington in 2019 and is produced locally every so often.
Gurney’s “love letters” pick up steam (and get steamier!) until…In 1990, “Love Letters” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
They saved their letters? In this day of email and texting? What letters? Not anymore! Print the ones you love and write the ones you love.
Over time, many notables have played the roles, often for fundraising events: Tom Hanks, Carol Burnett, Sissy Spacek, Brooke Shields, Liza Minnelli, Desi Arnaz Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, James Earl Jones, Charlton Heston and his wife.
During the O. J. Simpson trial in 1995 Lynn Redgrave and John Clark performed the readings for the sequestered jury on the jury’s day off.
Christopher Persil is Providence’s producer and stage manager; Bob Hannan, sound designer; Kathi Ranowsky, house manager. Sarah Mournighan’s lighting is “spot on,” perfectly timed to cast attention on Andy when he’s left alone on stage.
The last “Love Letters” runs this week at the James Lee Community Center, 2855 Annandale Rd., Falls Church 22042 Thursday and Saturday nights at 7:30 p.m. with a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. About 90 minutes with one 10-minute intermission. Tickets are $18 for seniors and students; $21 for others. Plenty of free, lighted parking. TIckets@providenceplayers.org; infor@providenceplayers.org. 703-425-6782. Funding by ArtsFairfax.
