Information provided by the Center for Visual and Performing Arts
MUNSTER, Ind. (January 27, 2022) – Love Letters, the timeless play by A.R. Gurney, will be presented for two dinner performances on Saturday February 12 in the ballroom at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster. Directed by William Pullinsi, Love Letters will star author and journalist Phil Potempa opposite actress and comedienne Jeannie Rapstad.
Love Letters shares the funny, passionate, and heartwarming tale about the overlapping lives and love of rebellious Melissa Gardner and buttoned-up Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, spanning their exchanged notes, cards, and letters during 50 years as they are recounted as a reading with the interplay of the two featured actors. The story timeline starts with second grade and details summer vacations, college life and marriages, including children, happiness and heartache starting in youth during the 1930s to the adult married life of the late 1970s.
The play has earned great acclaim with a simple production premise: a paired actor and actress comfortably seated on stage, with scripts as clear focal points, as they deliver the riveting story of a complicated couple’s lifetime relationship.
Dinners and shows
The February 12 performances in the Ballroom of The Center for Visual and Performing Arts begin with doors open for the matinee at 11:30 a.m., dinner served at noon, and show at 1 p.m., Doors open again at 5:30 p.m. for the evening seating, dinner at 6 p.m., and show at 7 p.m. The play runs just under two hours, which includes a 20-minute intermission.
The dinner menu is tomato bisque, followed by chicken marsala in a mushroom and wine sauce served with mashed red bliss potatoes and capri blend of vegetables, with assorted dinner rolls with butter. Dessert is chocolate fudge layer cake with raspberry drizzle. Tickets are $40, which does not include tax and gratuity. To purchase tickets, call 219-836-1930, ext. 2 or visit www.CVPA.org.
About Love Letters
Love Letters opened off-Broadway in March 1989, starring Kathleen Turner and John Rubinstein. When the show transferred to Broadway in October of that year, it was with Lynn Redgrave, John Clark and others teamed in the starring roles. Touring productions have included Robert Wagner and his actress wife Jill St. John, Charlton Heston and wife Lydia Clarke, Robert Foxworth and wife Elizabeth Montgomery, Marty Ingels and wife Shirley Jones, and most recently, Barbara Eden opposite Hal Linden.
Throughout three decades, the play’s signature marquee draw has remained the same: changing the two-person cast for notable names to appear throughout the run. The last Broadway revival of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters was in 2014 featuring paired star names like Brian Dennehy opposite Mia Farrow, and later, Carol Burnett, as well as Alan Alda with Candice Bergen, and Anjelica Huston with Martin Sheen. In October 2015, Ryan O’Neal joined Ali MacGraw for a national tour which launched in Los Angeles.
The Center for Visual and Performing Arts is located at 1040 Ridge Road in Munster, Indiana.
