Review - Love Letters

I was very fortunate to receive comp tickets for last night's final preview performance of the Broadway revival of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters.  I'd seen the show before at a community theater in Ohio and I'd seen the television adaptation, but I didn't see it when it played New York with its rotating cyle of stars.  This new revival has a lot of stars lined up, too, but I'm thrilled with who I got to see last night.  I was also thrilled to be able to go with my handsome talented pal, who I haven't seen nearly enough of this summer.

Love Letters tells the story of Andrew Makepiece Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, childhood friends who exchange letters for 50 years.  We first meet them at seven-years-old and get a peek into their lives through adolescence, college, young adulthood and middle age.  It's a seemingly simple story, just two actors reading from the 'letters' at a table, but this script is so much more.

The opening night cast (and the cast we saw last night) was Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy.  I've been fans of theirs for years, though I only knew Farrow from her film work.  I'd already been blown away by Dennehy in Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey Into Night, so I knew I would enjoy him.  I was not wrong, he was fantastic, but I was rather surprised to be so completely entranced by Mia Farrow. 

photo credit: Carol Rosegg

Farrow captured the quicksilver qualities of Melissa, a self-destructive and immature girl, who never really grows up, but yet she's so fast and funny, so smart and touching, you just love her, even when she's behaving 'badly.'  Her vulnerability is always showing, but you also see her resolve underneath.  When her resolve finally wavers, it's heartbreaking.  And Dennehy really brings his own gruff teddy bear-ness to the role of Andy, a man who's been programmed his whole life to be a certain kind of person, but his affection and attraction to Melissa shows him another life he might be able to have.  He so beautifully expresses himself via letters, but we discover that expressiveness in his real life is harder to come by.  Both performers give extremely detailed and moving readings of this still-sharp script.  Their chemistry is also warm, familiar and quite unexpected.  I should check the internet to see if they've ever performed together before...

The dialogue, the jokes, the poignancy still jumps off the page of Love Letters, even in this age of iPhones, e-mail and Twitter.  You would think the play would seem dusty and dated by now.  It doesn't.  It's as fresh and funny as ever.  Human connection is always relevant and the need to find someone to understand you is still universal.  I laughed and I cried during Love Letters - I even thought about writing a letter to a a certain someone, to see if I could reveal "my true self" as Gurney describes.  But maybe not.  It takes a lot of bravery to do that, bravery that's beautifully portrayed in A.R. Gurney's script and that Dennehy and Farrow have in spades as well.  Who would've thought this play first performed in the late 1980s could be so aspirational?

I did have the tiniest of quibbles, but it could perhaps just be me:  when I saw the show before, the performers were at two separate writing tables, so they could move around a bit in their chairs.  This production has the actors sitting at one table, so from our vantage point (second row, extreme house right), we could really only see the actors in profile until the very end.  It might've been nice to be able to see their faces a little more throughout the evening.  But, again, that's an itty bitty quibble. 

Upcoming stars include Carol Burnett, Alan Alda, Candice Bergen, Stacy Keach, Martin Sheen, Diana Rigg and Anjelica Huston.  I sure wouldn't mind going back to see how the play shifts and changes with different actors playing the parts, and I know other performers will emphasize different aspects within the characters.  Mia Farrow seemed so perfect, though, I'm curious to see how other actresses take on this very complicated woman.  I'm so grateful to have received comp tickets to last night's show and I highly recommend everyone go see it (and I was especially glad to see it with my handsome talented pal, who loved it as much as I did).  You'll be surprised at how it can still make you feel.