Back in the day, 1970 to be exact, they costarred in the blockbuster feature film “Love Story,” directed by Arthur Hiller. If you didn’t see it, you’ll probably recall the tagline: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
So it was only fitting that Hiller was there to see Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal costarring again in the theatrical production of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills on Wednesday night. The run kicks off a national tour.
The sold-out crowd was enraptured as the two actors, playing Melissa Gardner, a bohemian artist and Andrew “Andy” Makepeace Ladd III, who becomes a U.S. senator, read letters to each other that chronicled a lifelong love affair – starting when they were second-graders in 1937 – that only came to any sort of traditional fruition near the end. At that point, it is fraught with passion, regret and heartbreak.
Yet the friendship between the two was a near constant presence as they navigated through decades of relationships with their parents, school, travel, other boyfriends and lovers and later, husbands, wives, children and careers. And then, on Melissa’s side, the nearly inevitable struggles with depression and divorce.
With their own history stretching back for more than 45 years, “Love Letters” seems tailor-made to represent the soulmate aspect of the two characters, spanning a 50 year period in their lives.
The “action” and drama all takes place as MacGraw and O’Neal sit at a wooden desk next to each other, their relationship revealed through the letters they write to each other, which elicit both laughter and tears, when appropriate, from the audience. Non-responses from the other are evoked by a few seconds of tension-filled silence as the letter-writer waits to hear back. But the missives always resume.
Both actors seem comfortable with their roles as have many other big-name stars who have performed “Love Letters” over the years, including Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones. A recent Broadway production featured Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy. The play initially premiered in 1988 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama.
Yet there is a special significance for these two, with their vaunted “Love” history, and an unscripted embrace on stage makes their long-held affection for each other very clear.
(“Love Letters” with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw and directed by Gregory Mosher runs at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills through October 25, www.thewallis.org.)
