On Valentine's Weekend Guilford Center Stage will present three performances of the 1988 hit play, "Love Letters," by A. R. Gurney, at Broad Brook Community Center.
The two-character show will be performed Friday and Saturday, February 14 and 15, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday the 16th at 2 pm.
Love Letters was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The play unfolds as the two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, each read the notes and letters they wrote to the other over the past fifty years. When the play was on Broadway, a tradition began of having various actors take turns from show to show: Carol Burnett and Alan Alda, Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy, and some sixty more were in the lineup.
In keeping with the "couples" theme, the Guilford performances will each be read by a different actor-couple. The opening night readers, Friday the 14th, will be Evelyn and Don McLean, of Guilford, with Brattleboro couples featured on Saturday the 15th — Gay and James Maxwell — and the matinee on the 16th: Christopher Coutant and Michael Kennedy.
A special Valentines Day feature on Friday only will be a romantic dinner, preceding the show, at 5:30 pm, prepared by board members of Broad Brook Community Center, host venue of Guilford Center Stage. (See separate listing on Front Porch Forum about the dinner.)
Advance tickets for the play may be purchased online at /bpt.me/6514597. Info about both the play and the dinner may be found on the community center's site at broadbrookcommunitycenter.com.
A.R. Gurney's Love Letters is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, Servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection (www.dramatists.com)
Feb 13, 2025, 3 to 4 PM
Valentine's Day Dinner and Swing DanceFeb 14, 2025, 6 to 10 PM
Mammals of WinterFeb 16, 2025, 12 to 12 PM