‘Love Letters’ – Valentine’s celebration at Lionel Wendt in February

Saturday, 25 January 2025 00:08 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

A.R. Gurney’s Pulitzer Prize nominated play ‘Love Letters’ go on the boards of the Lionel Wendt Theatre to coincide with the Valentine’s Day spirit, from 13 to 16 February. It is presented by the Performing Arts Company.

Love Letters seems a simple enough play, but underneath its simplicity it carries a poignant and touching love story. The plot revolves around Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, childhood friends whose enduring and all-encompassing friendship spans almost 60 years of writing letters, notes and messages to each other. From childhood birthday parties to the awkward teens and growing up years, and beyond, their friendship evolves, erodes and survives. Melissa and Andrew are soul mates, interlinked to each other and always, at the very least, honest to each other about themselves. Their friendship gets complicated by their numerous and sometimes not so successful attempts to date each other and survives their marriages to different people and the very different paths their lives, careers and loves take them. Their circumstances, achievements, trials and tribulations strike an immediate chord with the audience, and many see aspects of their own lives replayed in the characters of Melissa and Andrew.

Through their letters to each other Melissa and Andrew take you on a journey – a journey through their emotions and to a time when people still wrote and posted letters and waited for a reply to arrive. Love Letters takes you back to a wonderful time when friends were important enough to sit and write a letter to.

Love Letters is also a powerful reminder of how we strive to have at least one person in our lives with whom we can truly be ourselves – devoid of all pretence and disguise; the one person to whom we can reveal the truth about our actions, motives and intentions and know that we will not be judged by them, and that our friendship will endure them. Mellissa and Andy enjoy a friendship just like that. Their letters are funny, poignant, touching. The play itself makes you long for such a friend in your life too.

So essentially then, Love Letters is an evening of theatre which focuses on one of the most powerful of human traits. Our ability to communicate. The play is performed by veteran actors Mohamed (Adam) Adamaly who plays Andy and Tracy Holsinger who plays Melissa.

The Performing Arts Company (PAC) now a premier theatre company in Sri Lanka with several box office hit productions to their credit, was established in 1994 as an amateur theatre production group. This production is produced by Nadira and Mohamed Adamaly and directed by Nafeesa K. Amiruddeen.

Tickets are available online at https://boxoffice.lk/events/love-letters/