There’s a reason actresses from Kathleen Turner to Carol Burnett and actors ranging from Christopher Walken to Mel Gibson have performed “Love Letters.”
“On different levels, this play touches everybody somehow,” said Alpine Bank Vice President Beth Drum, who, with Rich Fletcher, is one of six notable Durangoans performing in the play this week. “Rich and I were talking about how we both have little bits of this story in our own lives, still staying in contact with our own first loves, even if it’s a text message one time a year rather than a letter.”
The Pulitzer Prize-finalist play by A.R. Gurney, written as a series of notes, postcards, announcements and letters between Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, is a powerful piece of theater. The story spans their lives, beginning as second-graders and continuing through love’s ups and downs, spats and making up, marriages and divorces. Describing a performance featuring two people sitting at a table and reading as gripping may seem unlikely, but it is.
Drum helped set the scene by bringing in the table her parents bought when they were first married. She and Fletcher will be center stage in the final Saturday performance.
The Durango Herald’s arts critic and cartoonist Judith Reynolds and former English professor, and current First Gentleman of Fort Lewis College Gordon Thomas will kick off the three-day series Thursday. Meredith Mapel, general manager of the family-owned Durango/Farmington Coca-Cola Bottling Co., and Jack Llewellyn, executive director of the Durango Chamber of Commerce, round out the three couples with their Friday performance.
“This play has traditionally been done by famous actors to support theaters and theater companies,” said Theresa Carson, the play’s director and artistic director and theater manager for the DAC. “When I realized this would work as a fundraiser for us, I started asking around and had a group of about 20 possible names of well-known people before I started calling.”
Her challenge was to convince six nontheater people – only Mapel, who majored in theater and worked as an actress in Chicago, and Reynolds, who performed in college and in summer stock, have previous experience – to be willing to take the leap of faith. Once that was done, she needed to figure which six, in what configuration, would be effective and believable in the roles.
“It takes so much courage, so much gumption and a willingness to be horrible in front of the whole town, to do this,” Carson said. “Every one of them is great. The biggest challenge has been coordinating with their busy schedules for rehearsals.”
Neither Drum nor Fletcher have been on stage to perform since about the second grade.
“It was a piano recital, and I screwed up a duet,” Drum said. “The only way I could ever imagine doing something like this is to just read it. We’re all getting a little older, and I don’t think I could memorize my lines.”
Parts or all of the play have been performed here before. Dennis Johnson and Anna Price performed it with their repertory company in the 1990s and reprised the reading to celebrate Valentine’s Day for the Spoken Word Series at the Durango Public Library in 2010.
“But I think Theresa’s so creative to do these three couples over three nights,” Reynolds said. “We all have different circles, different friends and acquaintances.”
Reynolds knew Thomas because they both sing with several different choruses in town, including the Durango Choral Society and the FLC Concert Choir.
“He’s a wonderful singer with a big bass voice,” she said. “You can really tell that, and his experience as an English professor, when he’s acting. And he’s arrived at a whole bunch of insights into the text.”
The performances have come together with one group reading and three separate rehearsals for each couple. They’ve also done some rehearsing on their own.
“Some of the Carver’s waitresses have started to laugh and worry about us a little bit,” Drum said. “We just find a booth in back and start reading.”
Much-needed repairs
Money raised from the three performances of “Love Letters” will be used for improvements to the DAC Theatre.
“We’ve been very fortunate with the passionate, quality theater productions we’ve been able to offer,” Carson said. “But the facilities aren’t holding up to the productions. We need so many things.”
First on the list are new window coverings, which will cost several thousand dollars. Carson also hopes to raise enough to replace the back curtain, about $2,000, which is patched together and stained.
“It really limits our staging, having to use the mid-curtain instead,” she said.
Long-term, she hopes to go green with the lighting, which would save money once the initial investment is made, and put in non-carpeted flooring to the south of the stage, both for ease of cleaning when food is served at events and to provide some dancing space during concerts.
“Whatever we can do, I will be so grateful to these six people,” Carson said. “They were so willing and wanted to contribute.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
If you go
Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Love Letters” by A.R. Gurney will run for three nights beginning Thursday. Performances begin at 7 p.m., and tickets are $22 in advance, $26 at the door and $20 for DAC Season Pass holders.
Performers are:
Thursday – Judith Reynolds and Gordon Thomas
Friday – Meredith Mapel and Jack Llewellyn
Saturday – Beth Drum and Rich Fletcher
