Real Mail Dominance
Lovers ignite the word in stunning two-person show
By Sarah Phelan
There's a not-so-subtle but important difference between dinner drama and dinner theater. Dinner drama is about plate-throwing and insult-hurling in the discomfort of your own home. Dinner theater is what you do to escape dinner drama--done right, it's more than just an attractive alternative to domestic melodrama. It's an outright pleasure fest, a chance to have your theatrical cake and eat it, too.
Those who have never tried it can sample the deliciously funny and touching playreading of Love Letters down at Bocci's Cellar every Sunday from now through Christmas Eve. What could be better than delectable dishes whisked to your table by doting waiters in a suitably bacchanalian atmosphere? How about a witty script and fine acting? You also get that in A.R. Gurney's play about a couple who have remained connected since fourth grade through correspondence. The letters trace the long distanced lovers' lives from teenage crushes and hormonal highs to tough career choices and extramarital affairs.
Each week a different pair of actors plays Melissa and Andy, the stamp-crossed lovers. Opening night saw Sam Lovett in superb form as the goody-two-shoes Andy in love with the wild and flirtatious Melissa (the talented Tara McMilin). Andy's wooden writing style reflects his apple-polisher personality. He pens formal letters, skirts around his feelings and hides behind stiff rehashings of mundane events.
Melissa, the hedonistic and high-flying artist, doodles all over the page, critiques Andy mercilessly and gives him the short, sharp shock treatment when it comes to her graphic confessions of romances and drinking binges. Together, the duo dance an unlikely literary tango--she poised self-destructively on the edge of the abyss, he a dancing bear on a chain of parental and social expectations. While he dutifully graduates from Yale to become a lawyer and senator, Melissa aims to please herself, and is not afraid "to moon the whole fucking Senate, if necessary."
They say letter writing is a dying art, but not in Love Letters, where verbal bantering, stubborn silences, rambling ruminations and witty one-liners flourish. This show is a nostalgia trip back to those pre-email days of waiting for lavender-scented missives, those flimsy perfumed envelopes that were concrete evidence of an admirer and hard currency in the playground.
Love Letters will wing you back to days of budding sexuality and self-doubt, followed by an era of fully fledged sensuality--and even more self-doubt. It'll make you search out your illicit love letters, mourn your lost youth and wish for a pen pal. It might even stir you to write a letter to your love. For 32 cents, it's still a cheap thrill.
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A Petal for Your Thoughts: Bocci's owner and actor Stephen Paylow and Carolyn Hyatt take the stage in a special brunch performance of "Love Letters" on Sunday morning at Bocci's Cellar.
Love Letters stages a special brunch performance this Sunday at 11am and plays Sundays (6pm) through Dec. 24 at Bocci's Cellar, 140 Encinal St, Santa Cruz, 479-1795.
From the Dec. 7-13, 1995 issue of Metro Santa Cruz
Copyright © 1995 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.