Love Letters (play)

"Love Letters" is a Pulitzer Prize for Drama nominated play by A. R. Gurney. The play centers on just two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepiece Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the correspondence - in which they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats - that has passed between them throughout their separated lives. It is only at the sad ending that they realize they were really love letters all along.

The play is a performance favorite for busy name actors, for it requires little preparation, and lines should not be memorized.

It was first performed in 1988 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut with Joanna Gleason and John Rubinstein.

Directed by John Tillinger, it opened with Kathleen Turner and Rubinstein on March 27, 1989 at the off-Broadway Promenade Theatre, where it ran for 64 performances. The play was performed only on Sunday and Monday evenings and changed its cast weekly. Among those who appeared in it were Barbara Barrie, Philip Bosco, Stephen Collins, Victor Garber, Julie Harris, George Grizzard, Anthony Heald, George Hearn, Richard Kiley, Dana Ivey, William Hurt, Marsha Mason, Christopher Reeve, Holland Taylor, George Segal, Christopher Walken, Joan Van Ark, Treat Williams, and Frances Sternhagen.

On October 31 that same year, a Broadway production opened at the Edison Theatre, where it ran for 96 performances. It opened with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards. Other performers paired in the Broadway production included Lynn Redgrave and John Clark, Stockard Channing and John Rubinstein, Jane Curtin and Edward Hermann, Kate Nelligan and David Dukes, Polly Bergen and Robert Vaughn, Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth McGovern, Swoosie Kurtz and Richard Thomas, Elaine Stritch and Cliff Robertson, Nancy Marchand and Fritz Weaver, and Robert Foxworth and Elizabeth Montgomery.

The play has been performed by Carol Burnett, Brian Dennehy, Mel Gibson, and Sissy Spacek at the Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, Colorado [cite news | title = Welcome to Telluride - Now Go Away | author = Robert Weller | publisher = Associated Press | date = 1993-07-17]

In 1999, Gurney adapted "Love Letters" for a television movie, directed by Stanley Donen, that dramatized scenes and portrayed characters merely described in the play. Laura Linney and Steven Weber starred.

On December 1, 2007, Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones gave a benefit performance of the play, to raise $1 million for Taylor's AIDS foundation. Tickets for the show were priced at $2,500 and more than 500 people attended. This event happened to coincide with the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike and, rather than cross the picket line, Taylor requested a "one night dispensation". The Writers Guild agreed not to picket the Paramount Pictures lot that night, to allow for the performance.cite news
author=Associated Press
url=http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/12/02/elizabeth.taylor.ap/index.html
title=Striking writers give Elizabeth Taylor a pass
publisher=CNN.com
date=2007-12-02
accessdate = 2007-12-02]

On July 26, 2008, Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels performed "Love Letters" at the Detroit Institute of Art's Detroit Film Theater in a benefit for the Purple Rose Theatre Company.

References

External links

* [http://www.lortel.org/LLA_archive/index.cfm?search_by=show&title=Love%20Letters Off Broadway listing, Lortel site]
* [http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=4249/ Internet Broadway Database listing]
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171492/ Internet Movie Database listing]