Love Letters for Valentine’s Weekend

Guilford Center Stage gets an early start on its 10th anniversary 2025 season, with the first of its usual two productions taking place in February, rather than spring. Valentine’s Day is the occasion, and Guilford’s theater group presents its 14th production on … the 14th, with additional performances filling out the weekend, at Broad Brook Community Center.

The play is A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters,” a popular favorite in venues ranging from Broadway to community theater groups throughout the country in recent decades.

A special Valentine’s Day feature on Friday only will be a romantic dinner, preceding the show, prepared by board members of the host venue, Broad Brook Community Center. This evening of dinner/theater begins downstairs, in the dining room at 5:30 pm. Dinner is $30, benefitting the community center.

After dinner, at 7:30 pm, you may come up to the theater space for a performance of A. R. Gurney’s two-character play, “Love Letters,” which premiered in 1989, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. The play unfolds as the two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, each read the notes and letters they wrote to the other over the past fifty years.

In keeping with the “couples” theme, the Guilford performances will each be read by a different actor-couple. The opening night readers, Friday the 14th, will be Evelyn and Don McLean, of Guilford. Evelyn McLean has appeared in several Guilford Center Stage productions, and worked behind the scenes on others. Don McLean has been producer of the shows, but this is the first occasion in which he’ll appear on the stage.

As the weekend continues, Brattleboro actor-couples will take the stage. Saturday the 15th, Gay and James Maxwell perform. Gay Maxwell has appeared in two previous Guilford plays, and James Maxwell has directed and performed in plays throughout the area. Both were in the cast of the recent Guilford performances of Verandah Porche’s Broad Brook Anthology.

Concluding the weekend, the 2 pm matinee on February 16th will feature well-known area actors Christopher Coutant and her husband, Michael Kennedy. Coutant appeared in Broad Brook Anthology, and Kennedy directed that play.

A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters is presented by special arrangement with Broadway Licensing, LLC, servicing the Dramatists Play Service collection (www.dramatists.com). There is a tradition of having rotating casts of actors in this play: The Broadway production involved some 60 different actors, including such performers as Carol Burnett and Alan Alda.

General Admission to the play for all shows is $15 at the door, or online at Brown Paper Tickets in advance: bpt.me/6514597. A sliding scale is now in place for Guilford productions: let the box office attendant know if you’d like a price break!

The season concludes on October 17-19 with a pair of one-act mystery plays adapted by Springfield, Vermont playwright, Miles Ledoux from stories by Agatha Christie. Ledoux will direct the stagings.
Broad Brook Community Center is fully accessible, with special parking places, wheelchair access to the building, and an elevator to the theater venue upstairs.