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JOY DAVIS-PLATTThe powerful emotions evoked by a couple's love letters need little embellishing from the actors in a new play put on by the Stage West Community Playhouse.
SPRING HILL - Love letters let us peek at shared secrets, a process that actors at Stage West Community Playhouse hope also makes for great entertainment.
This weekend, Stage West will present Love Letters, a play that follows the lifelong correspondence between a man and woman beginning with their vastly different childhoods and continuing through the divergent paths of their lives.
"It's kind of a strange thing the way it works," said director Bob Reece. "It takes a lot of concentration from the audience, but they focus in and very soon they get the idea that these are two characters they're listening to."
Author A.R. Gurney's stage directions call for the play's two actors to sit side by side at a table, look down at their scripts and read letters. That's all.
But Reece says the very basic staging makes the play seem deceptively simple.
"Because there is no action or movement, the actors and audience remain very focused on the script," he said. "It leaves nothing to distract from the words."
The words are those of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III (Harvey Laskey) and Melissa Gardner (Mary Eileen Ameigh) and span the 50 years from when they met in second grade to when they are in their late '50s.
"It's almost as if these are letters that have been put in a box and the person is rereading the other person's words," said Reece. "Maybe they're even skipping through and reading selectively."
Gurney's plays include What I Did Last Summer, The Cocktail Hour and Sylvia. He was presented with a Drama Desk Award in 1971, a Rockefeller Award in 1977, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and the Award of Merit from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
As the play chronicles the relationship between Andrew and Melissa, Reece says it becomes clear that the pair have an irresistible mutual attraction despite their different values and backgrounds.
"It's a love affair between these two people," he said. "You can see it in their first letters from second grade, but then it blossoms over the years."
Love Letters opens today and continues weekends through June 22 in the Forum Theater at Stage West Community Playhouse, 8390 Forest Oaks Blvd., Spring Hill. Shows are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $10. The theater's box office is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and one hour before each show. Call 683-5113.