Love Letters April 2008

The Mill Theatre & City Theatre Dublin presents
"Love Letters"
by A.R. Gurney
Tivoli Theatre, Francis St., Dublin

David Soul & Jerry Hall

A.R. Gurney's Love Letters chronicles the relationship between Andy and Melissa solely through their correspondence. The play tells the story of Andrew Makepeace Ladd and Melissa Gardner, whose poignantly funny friendship and ill-fated romance takes them from second grade through adolescence, maturity, and into middle age.

A smash hit both off and on Broadway, Love Letters captures Andy and Melissa with a precision of detail and depth of feeling only Gurney can command. Love Letters is funny, compelling, sad, poignant, and will prove to be an exhilarating and touching night of theatre that will stay in the memory long after the performance ends.

David Soul achieved pop icon status as handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed Detective Kenneth Hutchinson on the cult "buddy cop" TV series "Starsky and Hutch" (1975). He has also had a successful musical career, charting a number 1 hit in the UK with 'Don't Give Up On Us'. He has toured internationally in several theater productions, including playing the narrator in the critically acclaimed production of Willy Russell's 'Blood Brothers', plus a successful UK tour performing in Ira Levin's 'Deathtrap'.

Jerry Hall has been involved in major Hollywood and Broadway productions, appearing in Tim Burton's 'Batman' alongside Jack Nicholson, while taking on the role of Mrs. Robinson in a 2000 production of 'The Graduate'. Most recently, she has appeared in her own reality TV show called 'Kept' on VH1, as well as playing Mother Lord in Cole Porter's 'High Society' in the West End.

"Exhilarating, funny and moving" The Wall Street Journal
"Gurney's virtues...civility, elegance, wit and charm...have seldom been better displayed than they are in Love Letters." New York Daily News

A RELATIONSHIP RETOLD ON STAGE BY TWO ACTORS, NO SCENERY AND NOT A LINGERING KISS IN SIGHT…
Anne Hughes reviews Love Letters in Dublin

LOVE LETTERS by A.R.Gurney
with Gerry Hall and David Soul
at The Tivoli Theatre, Dublin

Love Letters by A.R. Gurney is a unique and imaginative play that reconstructs the lifelong correspondence between two school friends, Andy and Melissa. Through letter writing their relationship bloomed over 50 years and evolved beyond friendship, sibling bonds and romantic ties. Their respective spouses do not share in this exclusive relationship.

The play is pure theatre, unadorned, needing no large set, no lengthy rehearsal, just two people reading to each other from a book of letters. Over the performance we become involved in the lives of Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd the Third from grade school to adulthood, marriage, divorce and middle age. Melissa (Gerry Hall) writes her letters with a good deal of spontaneity, speaking her mind in print. Andy (David Soul) writes his in a more mature, instructive, reflective way.

Gerry Hall was very persuasive as Melissa, the over-indulged, spoilt child of the rich and privileged set. Through her performance we realize that having money did not enhance Melissa’s childhood, rather, it became an accomplice to her being an undisciplined and unhappy woman all of her life. She played the part to perfection, from having to be persuaded to write letters in the first instance to being scarcely able to await their arrival. Her facial expressions moved beautifully from boredom to bemusement reacting to the hidden communication beneath the words of the other reader.

David Soul played Andy, throughout the play, as a strong, determined type. He is confident of his place in society and of his own expectations. What we were treated to was a very fine performance. Without the benefit of the physical interaction of other actors or even scene changes it is testimony to the actor’s own resources that he could create a character for us. Any letter writers in the audience could not but have been swept up in his infectious enthusiasm for the almost lost art of penmanship.

The play works precisely because there are only two people on stage, reading to each other. We become involved in the pictures they paint for us of the commonplace in their shared lives. This type of play requires the audience’s full attention and shouldn’t encourage any distractions. The sound effects used were a distraction. There was no need for a telephone ringing and the “Love Letters” music should have been more background and not loud, as it was. Also, the execution of lighting was sometimes distracting. Fades were jerky and the spots not tight enough.

The play was credible, the performance was well paced and well timed. Both actors’ lines were delivered in a clear and articulate way. A consummate performance.

Love Letters
Written by: AR Gurney
Directed by: Michael Scott
Starring: David Soul, Jerry Hall
Location & Date: Tivoli Theatre until 3 May

It tells you much of what to expect from the Tivoli's production of AR Gurney's 'Love Letters' when you learn that the play's two sole performers met for the first time only three days prior to curtain call.

Not that Jerry Hall and David Soul could have achieved much in the way of rehearsals prior to this limited run at the Tivoli. 'Love Letters' is a relatively simple play to perform and has proved popular with busy high-profile actors.
Paul Newman, Christopher Reeve, Robert Wagner, Lauren Bacall, Lynn Redgrave and, most recently, Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones, have all starred in various productions of the play.

One suspects that many were attracted to the work, not just by Gurney's fine script, but by the lack of need to memorise lines in a play which is essentially performed as a reading.

The basic premise tells the story of Andrew Makepeace Ladd (Soul) and Melissa Gardner (Hall), two childhood friends who maintain a correspondence through a series of letters from their early childhood right though to old age. Both from privileged backgrounds, their lives take drastically different directions as detailed in their often poignant and frequently funny correspondence.

Gurney's play is reminiscent in part to Heleene Hanff's 1970 novel '84 Charing Cross Road', which was later adapted for the stage, and is based around similar correspondence. Unlike a recent production of Hanff's work however, Hall and Soul remain seated throughout the two hour performance as they proceed to read from a series of cards which resemble prompt cards rather than letters. It's a small point, but in a play with limited set design and preparation, it is a detail which could have been easily afforded.

The lack of movement too takes away from the play, and stronger direction might have forced Hall and Soul out of their chairs at pivotal moments in the play if only to heighten their reaction to the more tragic moments which pepper each character's lives.

The need for movement and detail pricks the believability of the play, while Hall and Soul's performances on opening night both started poorly.

Evidently nervous, and arguably under-prepared, both failed to dig into Gurney's text and unearth the emotion in his words. As Soul stuttered at times, Hall seemed to switch off after reading her lines and on numerous occasions failed to react to the words written to her character.

The lighting didn't help and, like the music, seemed schizophrenic, jolting on and off at various intervals and never truly serving either the actors or the text in a competent fashion.

Post-interval however, both Hall and Soul kicked into life, with Hall's southern belle drawl bringing out both the charm and the menace within her troubled and argumentative character.

Soul, though still stuttering at times, injected his pompous Andy with no amount of charm and warmth and, as the play progressed, both actors began to gel and generate some chemistry. The laughs in the text were also drawn out, in direct contrast to its opening half.

Undoubtedly, as Hall and Soul both slip further into their characters, their performance will improve. Should the lighting and stage direction advance ever so slightly, then this production of a fine and engaging play will only get better.

Steve Cummins