‘Love Letters’: When pen & paper were the write stuff

PLAYING POST OFFICE: Mia Farrow & Brian Dennehy in ‘Love Letters.’ Photo: Carol Rosegg

LOVE LETTERS
Written by A.R. Gurney
Directed by Gregory Mosher
Brooks Atkinson Theatre
256 West 47th Street
New York, NY
(877-250-2929; www.lovelettersbroadway.com)

By David NouNou

We seldom see butterflies in New York City, and like the rare spring ethereal butterfly, A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters is lively, lovely, delicate, dreamlike, and seductive. Seeing it back in 1989 with Cliff Robertson and Elaine Stritch, in the parts of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, respectively, it was a sweet, touching tribute to love and self-expression in all its phases from childhood to death with all of life’s ups and downs through letter writing.

Seeing it now, it has attained a patina of sadness that it didn’t have then, the loss of an art form that is almost dead now called letter writing. The writers now are Brian Dennehy and Mia Farrow on an almost bare stage, seated behind a desk and reading their letters that spanned over their 50-year relationship. Starting from a thank-you note from Andrew to Melissa’s mother for being invited to Melissa’s birthday party (that was the proper thing to do back in 1937). Andrew loved to write letters, Melissa hated to write back, but they corresponded that way for over 50 years. Starting as children in grade school, going through different schools in their teens, off to college and then to adulthood. What a glorious chronicle. Throughout that time, their love took many forms: adolescence, awkward teens, flighty collegians, married to different people, and even old age sex, their love was indomitable.

What makes it so touching and real is that we all had these feelings with different people. How sublime it is to have that one love that is a constant throughout one’s life. Thanks to Gregory Mosher’s subtle direction, he has channeled all these emotions through his actors: Ms. Farrow and Mr. Dennehy through their readings. Ms. Farrow is excellent as Melissa; she conveys youth and its folly, coquettishness, frailty and sad desperation. Mr. Dennehy is perfect as Andrew, though his parameters are more limited, he is constantly stalwart.

Earlier I used the term “the play has attained a patina of sadness”, for who today writes a letter or holds a fountain pen? What took hundreds of years of self-expression, feelings and longings on the written page in an instant have been replaced by texting, LOL and OMG.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published September 26, 2014
Reviewed at press performance September 25, 2014