“My father believed everyone should write letters as much as they can. It’s a dying art. He says letters are a way of presenting yourself in the best possible light to another person,” reveals A. R. Gurney.
Buffalo-born playwright and author Alexander Ramsdell Gurney graduated from the elite St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire and then from Yale. His captivating and beautifully written comedies and dramas mirror the fascinating world of WASP society. Among his most popular, Love Letters is performed perennially, and now completing a run through Oct. 25 at the Wallis Center for the Performing Arts. Not to be missed are the vibrant performances from Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal, two handsome and ageless actors.
Theirs is a casting coup, indeed, with charismatic chemistry. Movie buffs will remember that Ali and Ryan co-starred in Love Story, the 1945 movie based on the bestselling “weeper” novel by Erich Segal.
Love Letters, directed by the Tony award-winning Gregory Mosher, is far removed from the film. Ninety minutes of humor and melancholy nuances about two people who met one another as children and fostered a long-lasting epistolary relationship. That grows more intense and warms the heart as you live with Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner through 50 years.
“I don’t think there are many men in this world who have had the benefit of such a friendship with such a woman,” reflects Andrew Ladd. “But it was more than friendship, too. I know now that I loved her. I loved her even from the day I met her, when she walked into second grade, looking like the lost princess of Oz I don’t think I loved anyone the way I loved her, and I know I never will again. She was at the heart of my life.”
After the opening night ovations, Gregory Mosher informed, before departing for the East Coast, that he spends, at best, no more than eight hours working with the actors. “And that’s it, a whistle-while-you-work endeavor.”
In 1988, after Gurney finished Love Letters, he sent it to The New Yorker. “They rejected it, we don’t publish plays.” He soon reworked it into a two-character comedy/drama. Scheduled to speak one evening at the New York Public Library, he decided, rather than lecturing, to premiere his work with his friend, actress Holland Taylor, and himself as the co-star. An instant win, of course, that established a proud future.
Love Letters begat theater history. Dozens of actors appeared smitten. Inviting themselves to perform, seated comfortably onstage while acting out the playscript to audiences. A bonus: dialogue need not be memorized.
Since its premiere from the last century when Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst brought Love Letters to Broadway, Gurney’s melancholy comedy has embraced a royal roundup of actors, hither and yon across the country.
To date, a mere sampling of Love Letters alumni include Elizabeth Taylor with James Earl Jones, Carol Burnett, Brian Dennehy, Mia Farrow, Kathleen Turner, Alec Baldwin, Anjelica Huston, Martin Sheen, Candice Bergen, Alan Alda, Larry Hagman, Linda Gray, Christopher Reeve, Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels, Stacey Keach, Swoosie Kurtz, Christopher Walken, the list goes on.
The film’s illustrious director Arthur Hiller with wife Gwen joined the first nighters. “Terrific” was his call on the performances and direction. Also with us were Marty Singer with Deena Singer (Marty’s no longer representing Bill Cosby with his legal travails), Corinna Fields and Carrie Brillstein, Jay Weston with a tall blonde beauty, Patrick O’Neal with Summer O’Neal, Kevin O’Neal, Hart Bochner, Alan Nierob, Arnold Robinson.
Also: Lois and Jerry Magnin, who love Edoardo Baldi’s good Italian food as much as we do at e.baldi, which is among our best, as is his late dad’s Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica that is overseen by Edoardo’s beautiful sister Elena. Jerry has corralled philanthropic bucks for the Wallis, vowing that operating a legit theater is costly, and, yes, please, contributions are welcome.
About that Democratic debate on CNN last week, local viewers are disturbed with the controversial DNC’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz arrogantly limiting the future Democratic debates, along with disappointment from moderator Anderson Cooper’s low-ball performance.
Several Beverly Hills ladies, among our longtime friends, expressed major curiosity about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s excellent cosmetic surgery. Oh, how they would love to know “who’s her surgeon.”
Meanwhile, Wolfgang Puck opens his Cut Steakhouse near the World Trade Center in New York next summer – “We finally have the best team and the right location to rise and shine.”