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Give Your Valentine "Love Letters"

Playwright (and CT resident) A. R. Gurney apparently knows a thing or two about love, having been married to his wife, Molly, for a half century. In his play "Love Letters," on stage at Music Theatre of CT now through Feb. 20, Gurney's fashioned a poignant, gentle and spare love story, one in which we learn everything about the lovers only through their letters spanning 50 years. In Music Theatre of CT's production, the two lover-correspondents, Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, are played by real-life husband and wife actors Scott Bryce and Jodi Stevens. Bryce's previously had roles in Broadway's "Caesar and Cleopatra," and Off-Broadway in "Sally's Gone She Left Her Name" and others, as well as in regional theater. On the soap opera "As the World Turns," Bryce played Craig Montgomery and was nominated two times for an Emmy for the role.Jodi Stevens was featured in the Broadway productions of "Urban Cowboy" and "Jekyll & Hyde."

Gurney is a former professor at M.I.T. who quit his day job after the success of his 1981 play, "The Dining Room." Most of his works are populated with upper middle class WASP characters, shining a light  into the world in which Gurney grew up in Buffalo, NY.

"Love Letters," which debuted in 1988 at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven with Joanna Gleason and John Rubinstein, later moved to Broadway. Since its debut, many well-known actors have inhabited the roles of Andew and Melissa, including Christopher Walken, Marsha Mason, Jane Curtin and William Hurt. As with the other actors, Scott Bryce and Jodi Stevens bring their own chemistry to distilling the deep tenderness in A. R. Gurney's "Love Letters." Performance times vary. Tickets are $25-$45. For more information, visit the theatre's website.

Have you seen any of A. R. Gurney's plays? Let us know by posting below.

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