Love Letters (play) - Performances

Performances

The play is a performance favorite for busy name actors, for it requires little preparation, and lines need not be memorized. It was first performed in 1988 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut with Joanna Gleason and John Rubinstein.

Directed by John Tillinger, it opened with Kathleen Turner and John Rubinstein on March 27, 1989, at the off-Broadway Promenade Theatre, where it ran for 64 performances. The play was performed only on Sunday and Monday evenings and changed its cast weekly. Among those who appeared in it were Barbara Barrie, Philip Bosco, Stephen Collins, Victor Garber, Julie Harris, George Grizzard, Anthony Heald, George Hearn, Richard Kiley, Dana Ivey, William Hurt, Marsha Mason, Christopher Reeve, Holland Taylor, George Segal, Christopher Walken, Joan Van Ark, Treat Williams, and Frances Sternhagen.

On October 31 that same year, a Broadway production opened at the Edison Theatre, where it ran for 96 performances. It opened with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards. Other performers paired in the Broadway production included Lynn Redgrave and John Clark, Stockard Channing and John Rubinstein, Jane Curtin and Edward Hermann, Kate Nelligan and David Dukes, Polly Bergen and Robert Vaughn, Timothy Hutton and Elizabeth McGovern, Swoosie Kurtz and Richard Thomas, Elaine Stritch and Cliff Robertson, Nancy Marchand and Fritz Weaver, and Robert Foxworth and Elizabeth Montgomery.

In the early 1990s, Larry Hagman reunited with his Dallas co-star Linda Gray for a tour with Love Letters. Later, in 2006, Larry Hagman took out the play five times in New York and Florida with his I Dream of Jeannie co-star Barbara Eden.

In the mid 1990s, the play toured with Robert Wagner and Jill St. John.

In October 2007, Claire Bloom appeared opposite Peter Bowles in a production at the Théâtre Princesse Grace, Monte Carlo, directed by Marc Sinden, as part of his British Theatre Season, Monaco.

On July 31, 2010, husband and wife actors Michael Emerson (Benjamin Linus of ABC's LOST) and Carrie Preston (Arlene Fowler of HBO's True Blood) read the play at the Charleston Stage. They performed it as a fundraiser for the South Carolina's theatre. The reading was followed by a brief and intimate Question and Answer session.

On October 9, 2010, Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross read the play in Lakireddy Auditorium at the University of California, Merced. The performance was a fundraiser for the University Arts Program.

In October 2011 the play was set on the stage of Pushkin Theatre in Moscow (Russia). Two roles are played by actor and film director Vladimir Menshov and his wife Vera Alentova. Both participated in creation of the famous movie Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. The film won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.