Once or twice before the current version of Love Letters opened up in NoDa, I had seen A.R. Gurney’s pocket tragicomedy in concert reading versions. Each time, I was hesitant to watch Gurney’s decorous Brahmin couple frittering away their lives without fulfilling their mutual adoration. And on each occasion, I’ve returned homewards surprised by how well I liked the piece. I was really hesitant this time. Love Letters was a relatively late entry in Off-Tryon Theatre Company’s schedule, replacing Agatha Christie’s A Murder Is Announced in the lineup months after the season had begun. Off-Tryon, which had produced Corpus Christie, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, American Buffalo and Baltimore Waltz earlier this year, did not seem like an ideal temperamental match for this comparatively bland porridge. Nor were Glenn Griffin and Christy Basa the names that popped instantly to mind as actors I’d wish to see as Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner.
As it turns out, Off-Tryon chose well on several counts. It takes just a couple of days to whip a presentable Love Letters into shape. Just assemble a pair of scripts, a pair of lecterns, a pair of savvy performers, stage a rehearsal or two, and you’re ready to roll. Glasses of water are optional.
Off-Tryon goes beyond the basics. Company managing director John Hartness has decreed that wife Suzy design a full-fledged set for this production. Directing this two-hander, he has also required Griffin and Basa to learn their lines. So for the first time in its history, you can call an Off-Tryon effort lavish and ultra-polished.
When high-profile celebs portray the US Senator and his controversial artist girlfriend, the opening epistolary exchanges, when Senator Andy and Melissa are just grade-schoolers, strike us as a charming, disarming surprise. We admire a megastar’s willingness to regress back to childhood, but we’re unlikely to truly believe what we see.
Griffin and Basa come closer. The conspiratorial mischief of childhood chums, the pettiness, the enthusiasm, and the exaggerated dignity and sensitivity are all captured. Hartness has his youngsters sitting scrunched-up in their chairs, feet off the ground, when we first see them. A nice touch.
Camaraderie comes early for our correspondents. Chemistry comes much later. A number of factors keep the intimates apart, beginning with Andy’s father, who disapproves of his less-pedigreed friend. Then there’s college, his service in the Vietnam War, her marriage, his marriage, and finally his high position of public trust.
But it’s probably the rejection of Melissa by Andrew II — and Andrew III’s acquiescence to it — that settles the trajectory of these interesting, intertwined lives. Andy’s is as straight as the straight-arrow he is: Yale Law School, Law Review, internship at the Supreme Court, job at prestigious law firm, partnership, marriage, family, and US Senate. Melissa has her ups and downs. At times, her art meets with critical approval; at others, she’s reviled. Sometimes, she believes in what she’s doing; and sometimes, she doesn’t.
She veers from painting to sculpture, from sobriety to alcoholism. Melissa’s boozing destroys her marriage, costs her custody of her kids – and ultimately their love. By the time Melissa and Andy finally click as lovers, he’s running for a second Senate term and can’t absorb the budding scandal politically. So he returns to the wife and kids, and he tells Melissa that they must cool it romantically.
It was decades of letter writing that sustained the Andrew/Melissa friendship long enough for the physical chemistry to become right. Ironically, the promise of continued correspondence now makes it easier for Andy to sever those same physical ties.
Basa has come far as an actress since her days as a UNCC student, giving by far her best performance ever in Charlotte. Reading lines from a letter isn’t exactly the same as speaking to the person you’re addressing, and Basa beautifully preserves the difference. Her reactions to the letters are exquisitely alert and apt.
Griffin is also in peak form as Andrew. He does an even better job than Basa in registering the effect of Melissa’s letters as we hear them and aging from schoolboy to statesman. But of course, the point when Ladd and Gardner become the subject of newspaper articles is precisely where the charisma of megastar actors would be most useful.
So yes, a more concentrated effort to make Griffin look senatorial toward the end — rimless reading glasses, perhaps — and turning Basa’s Melissa into more of a snippy bohemian would be helpful. But the truth is, Off-Tryon’s Love Letters is not at all in desperate need for improvement. I’m not sure it connects with the core audience that the company has developed. This version does connect powerfully with Gurney’s script, triumphantly embracing its quirky epistolary style, and following through with an ending that’s impressively poignant.
Hey, maybe when word spreads, Love Letters will wind up widening Off-Tryon’s audience. Hope so.
Sitting in the Grand Tier during Charlotte Symphony’s recent Magnificent Mendelssohn concert, my wife and I took turns watching guest soloist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg through binoculars. We differed radically in our reactions to what we saw. To my wife, Salerno-Sonnenberg’s expressiveness lifted Mendelssohn’s 1844 Violin Concerto in E Minor and made the music more meaningful. To me, S-S’s grimaces connoted ceaseless discomfort and distress, were totally disconnected from the emotions Mendelssohn conveyed so breathtakingly, and distracted me away from the music.
Before learning what my Sue thought of the twitch-a-thon we’d just witnessed, I made a beeline downstairs to the men’s room. Well, the buzz around the urinals prepared me for the shock. Admiration for S-S was nearly universal.
Symphony certainly does its part to ensure that S-S will shine. Her brochure photo is more than twice the size of any other guest soloist’s in the CSO Classics Series. The musical appetizer preceding the violin diva’s entrance, Schumann’s Manfred Overture, offered little in the way of virtuosity to compete with her. Although guest conductor George Manahan was plainly indicating a sense of urgency, this transmission from the podium didn’t seem to reach the ensemble until about halfway into the Manfred. Even after the upgrade in excitement, the performance fell far short of Schumann’s Byronic aspirations.
If the overture was disappointingly dull and routine, Manahan’s work behind Salerno-Sonnenberg was positively self-effacing. There was never any sense that Mendelssohn devoted any serious attention to the orchestral part of his concerto, so brightly was the spotlight fixed on the soloist.
She began with the musical equivalent of a pratfall, producing some of the oddest, ugliest tone I’ve ever heard from a world-class instrumentalist on familiar repertoire. To give Nadja credit, the fierceness of her attack was never blunted by her clattering results.
The second solo entrance in the passionate opening allegro was very mellow — after enough fidgeting to put an Olympic weightlifter to shame. One agitated, displeased look followed another. Salerno-Sonnenberg even seemed to be having trouble breathing as the movement unfolded. So while there was undeniable beauty in the playing, I had to turn away from the soloist’s distress to enjoy it.
It wasn’t until the closing allegretto-allegro that S-S finally gave herself permission to enjoy her work, truly rocking through the early challenges. The ensuing cadenzas seduced her into recklessness and flamboyant flourishes, making for grand spectacle and helping me to forget some of the earlier excesses and self-indulgences. Until I reviewed my notes.
After a perfunctory, four-square opening to Stravinsky’s “Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss,” the CSO’s wind principals finally got a chance to display their soloing chops. Frank Portone’s French horn, Hollis Ulaky’s oboe, Susanna Huppert’s flute, and Eugene Kavadlo’s clarinet — not to forget some neatly executed runs on Jennifer Dior’s piccolo — seemed to buoy the entire ensemble. All seemed eager to gallop and rumble. Timpani and bass drum held a fascinating dialogue with a string quartet comprised of the first chairs from each of the appropriate sections.
What a lovely showcase for an orchestra. All of Igor’s notorious syncopation was handled with nary a hitch. If this performance had preceded the concerto, our prima donna would have had ample reason for feeling distressed — and upstaged.
Closing the evening with Prokofiev’s Symphony #1 (“Classical”) was something of an anticlimax. But if some sparkling section work were needed to complete the listener’s satisfaction, then this 15-minute miniature provided it. The presto movement was quick and spring-like, the tight strings handing off the theme to the flutes before the ensemble built beautifully to a festive finish.
No, I didn’t forget Nadja’s furrowed brows and labored breathing after all was done. But I took home plenty of musical consolation.
Theatre Charlotte’s 9 x 9 @ 9 has evolved into one of the community’s most unique theatrical events. Staged in the lobby of the Queens Road barn with minimal provisions, the late evening rites showcase local actors in a quick-paced cavalcade of theater tidbits, often newly-minted by local writers.
Audience, seated around the playing space at cunning little cocktail tables, is largely composed of friends and relatives who come out in support of the fledgling performers and playwrights.
Atmosphere is somewhat akin to high school play competitions, where classmates come out to root for their team’s entry. Yet sprinkled among the apprentice work are little larks and pet projects crafted by pros. Such was Mother-in-Law, directed by Pam Galle and starring Bonnie Cook Johnson in the title role opposite a very promising Amy Cook. Character study gave way to riotous physical comedy as TC artistic director Daina Giesler guided A Doggone Catastrophe, where a dog owner tries to bridge the bark-gap to compatibility with a cat fancier.
Other highlights included Just Desserts, about a housewife who gorges on pie to drown her sorrows, and Ignition Switch, starring power couple Craig Spradley and Pam Hunt-Spradley. Aside from the lowest lowlights — the stilted Damaged and the under-rehearsed Reunion — the rest of the fare was more than acceptable. In fact, the whole concept is a lot of fun. *
This article appears in Dec 15-21, 2001.
