‘Love Letters’ forces audience to put imagination into use

The set for the original play, ‘Raisin in the Sun,’ was adapted for its replacement.

By GUY D’ASTOLFO

VINDICATOR ENTERTAINMENT WRITER

NILES — Jeff Smith found himself scrambling three weeks ago when a couple of cast members of “Raisin In the Sun,” which he was directing at Trumbull New Theatre, dropped out.

There wasn’t time to find replacements, so Smith had to pull the plug and find a new play. Enter “Love Letters,” which opened Friday for a three-weekend run.

“It’s been a roller-coaster for everyone involved,” Smith told The Vindicator several hours before the play opened. Love Letters” is a much easier play to stage: It requires only two characters — a man and woman — who literally read their letters to the other. No need to memorize.

And there is no interaction between the characters because they are in different locations. To illustrate, while the man reads aloud, the woman is reading the same letter silently. The audience hears what the woman is reading to herself.

Since the set for “Raisin” — two rooms in an apartment — was already done, Smith and Co. decided to not let it go to waste. They adapted it for “Love Letters,” making one side a woman’s home, with a sofa and feminine decor, and the other side a den with a decidedly masculine look: bookshelves, an easy chair and a mounted deer head with antlers. The result is a much more visual — and rewarding — version of the play, which usually just involves the characters sitting opposite each other at a table.

The characters — Andrew Makepeace Ladd III (played by Tim McGinley) and Melissa Gardner (played by Maureen Gregory) — are lifelong friends, born to the wealthy class. Andy is the stable one, and goes on to a successful career in law and politics. Melissa is the rebellious one, an artist who comes from a fractured family and cannot escape her demons. The two are romantically linked, although they do not marry each other.

They read a lifetime’s worth of letters to each other, from childhood to late adulthood. It starts off lighthearted but gets complicated as they age, culminating in a bittersweet ending.

Another benefit of TNT’s staging is the audience can see the characters’ faces as the letters are read, because the actors are facing the audience, not each other. It’s unusual, because the audience must watch the character who is saying nothing, instead of the one who is talking. You hear the letter-writer’s voice as the recipient imagines it, and simultaneously watch his or her face for a smile, a smirk, anger, stony silence, laughter or any of the myriad shades in between.

Despite their short window for rehearsal, McGinley and Gregory make the most of this opportunity to add a new layer of emotion. It’s a novel approach — although it can feel like you’re watching a tennis match when the letters become very short or are excerpted.

Like a great novel, “Love Letters” works because it forces the viewer to utilize his imagination, creating mental snapshots of these two intertwined lives. McGinley and Gregory color these scenes with their expressive readings.

Playwright A.R. Gurney wrote “Love Letters” in 1989, before the rise of the personal computer. TNT fleshes it out with a set and staging that makes it more effective. But how much longer before a desperate director really shakes it up by putting two monitors on a table and renaming it “Love E-mail”?

X’’Love Letters’ will be performed at 8 p.m. March 7, 8, 14 and 15; and 3 p.m. March 16, at Trumbull New Theatre, 5883 Youngstown-Warren Road, Niles. Call the box office at (330) 652-1103.