Director Rankin MacDonald and on stage husband and wife team Margaret Coady and Ian McNeil will present A. R. Gurney’s Pulitzer Prize nominated play Love Letters Sunday February 13th for the benefit of Strathspey Place Performing Arts Center in Mabou.
Love Letters centers on two characters named Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. The actors sit side by side at tables and read the notes, letters and cards – in which they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats – spanning over 50 years of lives lived. The play is both a poignant and funny exploration of of the dynamic tension between the sexes making it a a great Valentine’s Day event.
In 2007 Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones gave a benefit performance of the play, directed by John Tillinger, to raise $1 million for Taylor’s AIDS foundation. Tickets for the show were priced at $2,500 and more than 500 people attended. Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels also performed Love Letters in 2007 at New York University as a benefit for the Flea Theatre. Directed by Weaver’s husband, Jim Simpson and attended by the playwright, this performance was repeated on in 2008 at the Detroit Institute of Art’s Detroit Film Theater in a benefit for Daniels’ Purple Rose Theatre Company.
Tickets are $15 dollars each. There will be refreshments and a wine bar at intermission. Showtime is 8:00 pm
