Love Letters by A R Gurney, the powerful Pulitzer Prize-nominated piece of theatre returns to the Redlands from July 13 for a strictly limited season.
Presented by Mates Theatre Genesis, it comes to the Birkdale School of Arts with performances on July 13, 14,20 21, 27 and 28. Doors open at 7pm for a 7.45pm show.
Performing to full-houses at the Redland Museum earlier this year Love Letters in an enthralling theatre experience that explores humanity and relationships, using only the letters written by its two characters to convey the intense, complicated friendship they share.
Love Letters is an evocative, touching and frequently funny play about love, life and a friendship that is forged through a lifetime of shared memories and nostalgic recollections. Its underlying contemporariness will make audiences feel as though it could be them sitting in those chairs remembering their life-long love.
Originally written for two actors each reading their own letters to the audience, MTG director Chad Sherrin expanded the cast to three couples with each pair depicting life-long friends Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III during three defining phases of their lives: the school-yard angst, the discovery of self in young adulthood and reflecting on their fifty years of friendship in the mature years.
Chelsea August and Taine Harding play the young Melissa and Andrew, Jackie Wiley and Dallas Fogarty play the characters as young adults, and Jan Nary and Brian Gamble are the mature-aged Melissa and Andrew.
Simply crafted Love Letters delivers maximum impact as the two characters sit side-by-side on stage, each reading the letters, notes and messages lovingly preserved over more than half a century.
Melissa and Andrew’s relationship undergoes a series of changes during the course of their friendship. They are sometimes-sweethearts and sometimes-friends, they go through periods of estrangement and then intense clandestine affairs. These life-long friends share their hopes and aspirations, dreams, disappointments, victories and defeats through their letters.
Despite their differences Melissa and Andrew remain each other’s most trusted confidents. They are both from affluent families – Melissa’s has more money, but Andrew has better parents. Together, these two friends communicate through boarding school experiences, European adventures, failed marriages and the highs and low of their careers.
Love Letters was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1990 and has been performed countless times in the last 30 years, with many well-known actors appearing in its two roles.
Tickets are $25/$20/$10 and can be booked by contacting MTG on matestg.org.au or 0416 836 196. Group bookings are encouraged. MTG offer table seating, a licensed bar and light snacks are available.
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