LOVE LETTERS Plays Valentine's Day 2025 Weekend Performances At Center for Visual and Performing Arts

"Love Letters," the timeless play by A.R. Gurney, will be presented for two dinner performances for Valentine's Day Weekend 2025, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday Feb. 14 and a matinee performance at 3 p.m. Sunday Feb. 16 on the Theatre at the Center stage at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts, 1040 Ridge Road in Munster, Ind.

Directed by Philip Potempa, "Love Letters" will also star Potempa, a newspaper columnist for Chicago Tribune Media Co., opposite stage artist Cara Schmitt.

"Love Letters" shares the funny, passionate, and heartwarming tale about the overlapping lives and love of rebellious Melissa Gardner and buttoned-up Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, spanning their exchanged notes, cards and letters during 50 years as they are recounted as a reading with the interplay of the two featured stars. The story timeline starts with second grade and details summer vacations, college life and marriages, including children, happiness and heartache starting in youth during the 1930s to the adult married life of the late 1970s.

"Love Letters" has earned an iconic ovations status with a masterful and moving simple production premise: a paired actor and actress comfortably seated on stage, with scripts as clear focal points, as they deliver the riveting story of a complicated couple's lifetime relationship.

The play's initial reading was with the playwright himself, opposite actress Holland Taylor in 1988 before its tryouts before audiences at the Long Warf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut on Nov. 3, 1988 starring John Rubinstein and Joanna Gleason. When it opened off-Broadway in March 1989, it starred Kathleen Turner opposite Rubinstein. When the show transferred to Broadway in October of that year, it was with Lynn Redgrave, John Clark and others teamed in the starring roles. Touring productions have included Robert Wagner and his actress wife Jill St. John, Charlton Heston and wife Lydia Clarke, Robert Foxworth and wife Elizabeth Montgomery, Marty Ingels and wife Shirley Jones, and most recently, Barbara Eden opposite Hal Linden.

Throughout three decades, the play's signature marquee draw has remained the same: changing the two-person cast for notable names to appear throughout the run. The last Broadway revival of A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" was in 2014 featuring paired star names like Brian Dennehy opposite Mia Farrow, and later, Carol Burnett, as well as Alan Alda with Candice Bergen, and Anjelica Huston with Martin Sheen. In October 2015, Ryan O'Neal joined Ali MacGraw for a national tour which launched in Los Angeles.

This is Potempa's fifth time stepping into the life of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. His last "Love Letters" run was in February 2022 in the ballroom at The Center for Visual and Performing Arts in Munster with director William Pullinsi guiding the production. It was in 1961 when Pullinsi, credited as "the Godfather of Dinner Theatre," opened Candlelight Playhouse in Summit, Illinois drawing Chicagoland audiences hungry to embrace the opportunity to dine while dazzled with sold-out performance runs such as "Man of La Mancha," "Follies" and "Phantom," among other popular titles, for 38 years until it ceased operations in 1997.

Tickets to "Love Letters" are $35 and available at www.cvpa.org or 219-836-3255. Proceeds from the performances benefit the Women's Association of the Northwest Indiana Symphony Society (WANISS).

On Feb. 14, for an additional $50, guest can add a pre-show Valentine's Day dinner in the ballroom at 5:30 pm, with doors open at 5 pm, presented by 10Forty Banquets & Catering Inc. Call for reservation and meal payment: 219-836-1930, Ext. 2. The menu is Cream of Chicken Rice Soup, Spring Greens Garden Salad, Main entree choice of Prime Sirloin Steak or Stuffed Spinach Mousse Chicken and Duchess Mashed Potato and Fresh Asparagus with a dessert finale of Raspberry Cheesecake with Crème Anglaise and Berries served with a complimentary glass of champagne.

On Feb. 16, for an additional $35, guests can add the Sunday Champagne Brunch, presented by 10Forty Banquets & Catering Inc. Seating available for 11 am, noon or 1 pm. Call for reservation and meal payment at 219-836-1930, Ext. 2.

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