Buffalo-born playwright A.R. “Pete” Gurney’s LOVE LETTERS, starring Ryan O’Neal & Ali MacGraw, reunited stars of the 1970 movie “Love Story” on stage for the first time. Hopefully you got a chance to soak up some Hollywood glamour while the show was in town.
The “American Dream” says that with hard work, in our melting-pot society where “all men are created equal,” everyone has the opportunity for prosperity and success, if not for ourselves, at least for our children. It is amazingly persistent in the face of hard socio-economic truths and indeed other words for dream are delusion and fantasy. But in the expression “American Dream” the word dream is supposed to mean wish, goal, aspiration, or ambition. So to what, exactly, do we aspire? One symbol of that success is the WASP, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant with the Ivy-League education, connections, and access to power. Often when we imagine the “1 Percenters” we imagine WASPS.
If we want to read about WASPS we go to the author John Cheever. But if we want to see WASPS in action we go to Gurney plays. A.R. “Pete” Gurney, born in Buffalo on November 1, 1930, at 85 is sharp and funny as ever. In a recent conversation the author shared the origin of the play LOVE LETTERS. It all started in the mid-1980s when Gurney submitted an “epistolary novel” (a story told through a series of letters) to The New Yorker magazine. The New Yorker’s response was: “We don’t publish plays.” And Gurney’s agent gently suggested that maybe it was a play, after all.
So Gurney sent a copy to his friend Holland Taylor (whom most know today as Charlie Sheen’s mother on the TV series “Two and a Half Men”). She loved it and wanted to perform it. In the meantime, the New York Public Library had contracted with Gurney to deliver a lecture. Following the success of his play THE DINING ROOM they library wanted a talk entitled “The WASPS at Dinner.” Gurney said that he didn’t want to speak; he wanted to read his new “play.” The library demurred, but Gurney said that Holland Taylor was already on her way to New York and it was a done deal.
It wasn’t a sure success on “opening night” back in 1988. Gurney relates that at the intermission (today the play runs 90 minutes without intermission) most of the audience appeared to get up and leave. But they weren’t leaving. They were outside calling baby-sitters to say that the “talk” was actually a play, it was great, and they would be home later than expected. They all came back to their seats, and that was the start. Various companies tried it, but when the Long Wharf Theatre mounted it, it was on the way. Over the years, the star-studded list of actors who have performed it is staggering.
Gurney says that, one appeal to busy stars is that it doesn’t have to be memorized. It doesn’t even require props. The actors simply read from 3 ring notebooks.
Gurney says that, one appeal to busy stars is that it doesn’t have to be memorized. It doesn’t even require props. The actors simply read from 3 ring notebooks. When some theaters have tried to stage it, he says “it’s terrible.” And the play works with any cast. Is there an upper age limit? No. When Elaine Stritch approached Gurney about the play, he tried to put her off, but, just as he had done himself with Holland Taylor, she had already signed up Jason Robards to do it with her.
As with Holland Taylor, Gurney has a particular fondness for Ali MacGraw as “Melissa Gardner” who is raised in wealth and privilege, but chafes against it. Ali MacGraw went to Wellesley College (one of the “7 sisters” aligned with the Ivy League) and before that she went to “Rosemary Hall” which was later absorbed by the famous prep school Choate. Gurney says “Ali MacGraw is absolutely, like Holland (Taylor), to the manor born.”
The male character in the play, Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, follows Gurney’s life to a certain extent, with upper-class education and a stint in the U.S. Navy. Gurney himself went to a prep school – St. Paul’s School. When asked “but what about Nichols (in Buffalo, NY)?” he replied that his Nichols School education had been interrupted when his parents sent him off to St. Paul’s School, a private, Episcopal school for grades 9 – 12, located in Concord, NH. “Nichols was a great school, I was successful and my grades were good, so I asked my parents ‘why are you sending me away?’ and my mother replied that ‘you need a little buffing up, a little polishing’.”
And, this play is polished. If you went to one of the performances, then you might agree with the following:
- Consider Love Letters a sequel to the move “Love Story;”
- It’s just fun to be so close to major Hollywood stars
- Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal have a history and a chemistry that is hard to duplicate
- Gurney, the WASP chronicler par excellence, says that Ali MacGraw is the perfect actor for the role
What a pleasure having LOVE LETTERS, and these big name actors, in town for a show that lived up to every expectation.
For more on this show, listen to my latest conversation on WBFO.
Photo: Gregory Costanzo