BWW Reviews: Alda sends Bergen M*A*S*H Notes in LOVE LETTERS

It may be a little late in the game now, but the new(ish) Broadway production of A.R. Gurney's Pulitzer Prize finalist Love Letters might do well to offer subscription tickets so that audiences, particularly acting students and aspiring directors, might observe the interpretive differences when the cast changes every month.

Director Gregory Mosher's staging remains as it's dictated by the author. The actors playing Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, both born of educated and cultured WASP privilege, sit center stage at a table and, never relating to each other directly, read aloud the lifetime of scribbles, notes, letters, post cards, formal invitations, obligatory holiday greetings and desperate pleas for help that served as their main form of communication during their decades-long relationship.

After opening with Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy, and then having Carol Burnett partner with Dennehy for his second go at it, the Broadway company is now completely revised with Candice Bergen and Alan Alda, two actors best known for their multiple Emmy-winning roles in groundbreaking sitcoms. If there are traces of Murphy Brown's tough, protective shell hiding her vulnerability as she fights her demons and Hawkeye Pierce's graceful sensitivity toward others as he bottles up his own emotions on display at the Brooks Atkinson these days, they're completely appropriate to the characters and serve the piece extremely well.

Despite the connective barrier the play puts between them, it's very easy to see Alda's Andrew and Bergen's Melissa as a pair with a long and deeply felt history. There is warmth between them churning from Melissa's unspoken romantic love for Andrew and Andrew's protective feelings toward his lifelong friend.

Melissa is the impulsive artist who hates writing letters and prefers to talk and Bergen conveys the sense that she needs the opportunity to blurt out her feelings rather than think about them through pen and paper. Alda's Andrew is carefully selecting his words, not wanting to mislead his friend, and avoids direct contact where he may accidently let out feelings he may not even know he has.

This pair uses silences extremely well and, in select moments, Bergen is heartbreaking as she reacts to what Melissa is reading as she hears Andrew's voice in her mind.

New York has seen quite a few pairs take on the roles of Melissa and Andrew since Love Letters opened Off-Broadway in 1989. Candice Bergen and Alan Alda may be among the most endearing and believable.

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