Love Letters

Bittersweet Memoirs

Love Letters

by A J Gurney

OHADS at the Coward Studio, Hampton Hill Theatre until 4^th November

Review by Steve Mackrell

Love Letters is a play in which two seated characters read out a lifetime’s correspondence which, on the face of it, requires little in the way of set design or costumes and, arguably, not even much rehearsal.  Nonetheless, the play has recently become something of a celebrity vehicle with the latest notable outing being a production by the late Bill Kenwright, with Martin Shaw and Jenny Seagrove, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.  This was the first post-lockdown play to open in the West End following the Covid pandemic, a choice presumably made easier due to meeting the required social distancing between the two actors.

LoveLetters is an American play by A.R. Gurney that first opened in New York in 1988 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  The play centres on two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III who sit side by side at a table and read out aloud the story of their lives through correspondence with each other over a period of some fifty years.  We follow their lives – their hopes and ambitions, their dreams and disappointments, over a lifetime of (mostly) separate lives. 

On the face of it, given a script consisting of only two characters merely reading aloud their correspondence with each over a lifetime, the first thought was – surely a radio play – and hence I was curious to understand how any theatrical drama could possibly be squeezed out of such a concept.  Would it be elevated by the creativity of the writing, the acting or the directing?   In the end, it was a happy combination of all these elements that led to an engrossing evening in the studio at Hampton Hill Theatre.

Firstly, the writing was sharp and witty, as we followed a story of two very different people in Melissa and Andy.  We have entered the rather exclusive intellectual world of East Coast USA and prestigious schools such as Yale, as seen through the eyes of Melissa, rich, flighty and artistic, and Andy, solid, dependable and dutiful.  The first half is a fascinating exchange of male-female adolescent fantasises and a world of Chesterfield cigarettes and Parker 51 pens.  In the second half we see their adult development and Melissa’s fall into alcoholism and divorce and Andy’s rise through the Navy, excelling in a law firm, starting a family and finally gaining a seat as a Republican in the US Senate.

To bring the words of these letters to life, and to make them believable to the audience, needed the services of two very versatile, engaging and confident actors.  Dorothy Duffy lit the stage with her portrait of Melissa, the girl “dancing on the edge of an abyss” and the “lost Princess of Oz”.  We shared her adolescent aspirations and we shared her subsequent pains.  Playing the part of Andy, Michael Andrew truly captured the “nice guy” – aspirational and solid, earnest yet dull.  Both actors effectively projected their character’s personality, displayed an extensive vocal range and captured many subtleties of emotion and irony. 

At the helm of all this, director Harry Medawar, himself no stranger to quirky plays, pulled off the almost impossible feat of making the reading out the correspondence between two people sound more like conversation.  The actors, always looking out front, mostly never at each other, talked directly to the audience, their words crisp and clear and also in a sustained gentle American accent.  It seems the trained ear of the director was able to conduct the language of the play – impose the correct tones, inflections and nuances of spoken English.  The words were weighted correctly and matched by appropriate reactions, both bodily and facially.  Pauses were integral and again, together with timing, rehearsed until it looked effortless.

This was an excellent production and totally engrossing from the early years of childhood curiosity through to the sadder reaches of later life.  Indeed, their relationship ebbs and flows over the years with early letters of teenage ardour giving way to xeroxed Christmas letters of later years.  LoveLetters is a tender, tragic-comic exploration of the shared nostalgia, missed opportunities, and deep closeness of two lifelong and complicated friends.  It is beautifully observed, wonderfully acted and slickly directed.  Plus, an ending to leave a lump in the throat. 

Steve Mackrell, November 2023

Photography courtesy of OHADS