No matter what you have on your calendar between now and Sunday, "Love Letters" is one show that must go right on top of your must-see list.
The "Love Letters" that playwright A.R. Gurney has given us aren't like Pat Boone's - sketched in the sand then washed out with the tide.Rather, these are on paper, written over the space of some 50 years between Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner and preserved forever in our memories.
In form and concept, "Love Letters" defies all the normal laws of traditional theater.
With virtually no scenery and only the barest essentials for props (a table, two chairs and a rug), this is in direct contrast to the spectacular musicals the Theater League of Utah usually brings to town.
But with two incredibly gifted performers, the husband/wife team of Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, at centerstage, "Love Letters" generates the kind of magic only found in live theater.
By having Steve and Jayne seated at the table, reading back and forth from Andrew and Melissa's letters, this fascinating piece cuts directly to the most basic element of any play - the words.
The Allens turn Andrew and Melissa into flesh-and-blood people we can laugh and cry with, admire or feel sorry for.
Gurney's "sort of a play" starts in 1937 with little Andy's reply to a birthday invitation from fellow third-grader Melissa and ends in the late '80s with the penning of a heartfelt letter of condolence.
In between, there are notes passed to each other in class (please recite in unison, now: "We will not pass notes in class. We will not pass notes in class"), followed during the next couple of hours by an ever-changing pattern of postmarks - letters mailed to and from boys' prep schools, private girls' academies, Yale, Briarcliff, a Navy ship in the Mediterranean, an apartment in Florence, Harvard law school, an art studio in Soho, the New York Legislature, a clinic for alcoholics in Boston, the Senate offices in Washington, D.C., and . . . from the edge of the abyss.
Those are just some of the addresses.
The substance in this uniquely crafted work is found between the lines of the letters Andrew and Melissa exchange. (It doesn't take long for the audience to get on a first-name basis with these two. And by the time the play ends, in less than two hours, they've become our own longtime friends.)
Scholarly Andrew, who loves to write, tells Melissa about his feats and frustrations in prep school, while Melissa - wondering about parents who first push them together, then try to pull them apart - writes about being shunted off to a girls' school.
Melissa HATES writing letters and wishes Andrew would phone. Once, when he insists she an
swer some specific questions, she does just that, replying simply "No. No. Yes. Yes. No."
Melissa also shows a more artistic bent, augmenting her letters with her drawings - a dancing bear on a tight rein (a pictorial comment on how Andrew's goal-oriented parents are controlling him), a bedpan when she's in the hospital, a drawing of Andy's old pet dog, Porgy.
One of the funniest bits was Andrew's turn at writing one of those boring family Christmas letters, jammed with the usual button-popping vanity.
The letters between Andrew and Melissa also tell a moving, poignant story of two people who are afraid to admit they're really in love with each other, until it's too late - long after they've both been married and divorced, then remarried.
She comes from a wealthy family. His is poorer, but more solid.
Over all, it's more than just 50 years' of letters following the marvelous ups and tragic downs of two New England people - it's a microcosm of five decades of American society: pushy parents, political differences, child abuse, dreams flushed down the drain by too much booze, quicky Reno divorces, child custody battles. Gurney touches on dozens of familiar issues.
"Love Letters" draws on our feelings and emotions. It's full of romance and poetry - and a surprising amount of humor.