Email mail may reign in real life, but on stage, old-fashioned letter writing makes a bigger impact.
Heartland Theatre Company is staging a unique and imaginative work that , while simple in its presentation, delves deep into the complexities of a long term relationship. A lifetime of letters between Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner reveal a touching, funny and evocative relationship between two very different people. The characters are at the heart of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters, and are played by Dean and Cyndee Brown, who have been married for 42 years.
Dean Brown said the play starts when the characters are just children. 'It really is a fifty year glimpse into the lives of these people. It starts as children and becomes their first love interest. And they go their separate ways, and they come back together. And it's all done through their correspondence.'
The title of the play is Love Letters, yet the characters are not lovers throughout their lives. Actress Cyndee Brown remarked, 'I think by the time you get to the end of the play and as you take a look at these two incredibly interesting people and what they try to be together and what they have to be apart, I think you come to realize that they have experienced different kinds of love in this relationship.'
The relationship between the two characters is slowly revealed through the reading of their letters. Although it sounds dry, it's anything but, Cyndee Brown said. 'It's almost part detective fiction. You get a little piece, and then you get another little piece, and you're building your impression of this relationship, and you're watching their lives build themselves. And you wonder, how it's going to end and what's going to happen to these people.'
