Ngozi Anyanwu, who wrote and appears in The Last of the Love Letters—a devastating production by anyone’s measure—calls it “a meditation on loneliness.” That’s to say, she does so in the script, which is set out as a lengthy poem.
No such description shows up in the program, which most likely leads audience members to go by the title and determine they’re attending what might be, and perhaps ought to be viewed as, a meditation on love.
The Last of the Love Letters is both. Anyanwu’s play is a meditation on love that strongly implies love inevitably disintegrates into loneliness. Or worse. The 70-minute, intermission-less three-hander is best, and rightly, appreciated as a muscularly poetic outcry. As such, it increasingly gathers dramatic momentum and is ultimately extremely moving.
Usually, I worry to the point of shifting uncomfortably in my seat when, before the lights dim, I read that the characters are not given names but, as Anyanwu does here, calls them something inexplicit. She dubs this trio: You (Anyanwu herself), You No. 2 (Daniel J. Watts), and Person (Xavier Scott Evans).
I cringe, because in these circumstances I have learned I’m in for something boringly pretentious. Additionally, Anyanwu lets us know these particulars: Place: Anywhere, Time: Whenever. (The script has the characters listed as: Her to Go, Him to Stay, and A Person to Continue.)
Instantly and reassuringly, Anyanwu proves she’s the exception to my rule. When the lights go down, she brings on You—no, she doesn’t bring on You. You has been wandering around her dingy apartment (Yu Hsuan Chen, the set designer) since patrons have started taking their places. (Does this make the piece a 100-minute outing?) Already she’s established You as a distracted occupant, who, when the lights have no need to dim (Stacey Derosier, the lighting designer), begins a tempestuous monologue on the many minuses and fewer pluses of her current-about-to-be-ex-boyfriend.
She declares that coming to her decision to part ways wasn’t so easy, then decides it wasn’t hard, either. And so her wavering goes, until she grabs her bags and finally exits through an upstage door, which—Forget that. Describing what occurs at You’s front door is giving too much away. It may, however, be fair to mention that what does happen serves as a telling metaphor.
As playwright, Anyanwu issues a simultaneously grim and humorous outcry. The back-and-forthing about You’s mixed takes on a love affair registers as universally recognizable (cf. Wherever and Whenever). As actress, Anyanwu is mesmerizingly labile—adamant, uncertain, sure, unsure, angry, mollified. In one memorable early moment, she’s flops supine on her metal bed, listening to “Love TKO.” (I think it’s the Teddy Prendergass version.) It’s a deliberate précis of what You is going through and responding to. In other words, she’s hearing the count on her own TKO love affair.
You’s deliberations are only one-half of the love complications Anyanwu follows. After white uniform-clad movers undo You’s apartment to reveal a stage empty of all but a sink, a urinal, a raised stairway, and some strewn papers, You 2 lurches into view. Although it’s never explicitly established that he is You’s estranged boyfriend—no names mentioned, of course—it’s as clear as an asylum’s window that he’s also suffering love-war wounds. Indeed, he’s been severely afflicted, as the occasional appearance of the taciturn Person to administer pills confirms.
The implied message is that while You is locked in private distress, You 2 is much worse off. (Is Anyanwu saying that when love troubles rear ugly heads, men are more mentally imbalanced than women?) You 2 rants to the max and beyond as he reiterates many of the same complaints with which You has fouled the air. Having ingested many pills Person has dispensed, he only tires as his tirade ends—as, that is, Person’s pills at last take effect.
In Watt’s performing, something astonishing unfolds. It may be that his level of hyperkinetic athleticism—a brand of performing often seen on Olympic fields—has rarely, if ever, been unleashed on a stage. Reliving love’s pluses and minuses from You 2’s viewpoint, Watts takes the stage with imperialistic command. (No, he never makes use of the sink or the urinal.)
During his first minute, he tries out a series of poses to communicate the figure’s attempted nonchalance before settling on one he hopes fits the mood. Perhaps the easiest way I can applaud Watt’s outing is to say that If this year I see another performance reaching Watt’s poetically artistic level, I’ll consider myself lucky.
By the final dimming of the lights, it ought to be said, Anyanwu doesn’t seem to have decided on an appropriate finale. Maybe that’s due to her having misgivings about a relentlessly downbeat attitude. (How autobiographical The Last of the Love Letters is we will undoubtedly never know.) But that’s quibbling about Anyanwu’s probe of the ins-and-outs, the ups-and-downs, the pluses-and-minuses of love. Her impassioned probe is a stunning addition to the annals of playwriting gazes at love and its infinite possibilities.
The Last of the Love Letters opened September 13, 2021 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through September 26. Tickets and information: atlantictheater.org
