An epistolary recount of old, old love letters, set in the days of Hedy LaMarr and Winston Churchill and the Stage Door Canteen, might sound a tad dry for present-day audiences. I mean, how far can you go with correspondents who spend 90-odd minutes of playing time on opposite sides of the stage, never being able to arrange a meeting? The surprise of Dear Jack, Dear Louise, Ken Ludwig’s salute to his parents now onstage at 59E59, is that this play-in-letters turns out to be charming, funny, and emotionally involving.
The dramatist is known for his efforts at comedic craftsmanship (often intricate) and comic dialogue (often not quite as strong as the other elements of his work). In this case, though, he doesn’t seem to try to be funny, or smart, or dazzle us with cleverness. Perhaps because he is writing from the heart, he turns these letters into something of a magical long-distance courtship. Which, yes, is funny and smart and heart-warming.
The key to the piece seems to be Ludwig’s realization that these letters need not be read by rote, volleyed from one side of the stage to the other. Dr. Jack (Michael Liebhauser) is the son of a small-town Pennsylvania tailor, stationed at an Army hospital in Medford, Oregon, when he’s not sent off to tend the wounded on warships in the Pacific. Louise (Alexandra Fortin) is an aspiring chorus girl from Brooklyn, living at one of those Times Square footlight clubs for young actresses while striving for that one big break.
But there’s a war on, scuttling planned cross-continental meetings and making the culmination of romance all but impossible. Except that Ken Ludwig names his hero Jack Ludwig, so we know that something, eventually, shall be afoot. Ludwig (the playwright son) has contrived a fine way of using these heirloom letters—or what are more likely new letters the playwright himself devised as necessary.
The method is to simply have his parents/characters converse through the letters, while interacting—at a distance—on the small stage. This works well; while the characters remain a continent apart, they might just as well be in the same room. (It’s been 40 years since I read John van Druten’s 1943 The Voice of the Turtle—Broadway’s blockbuster romantic comedy of World War II, about a soldier and his girl—but I wonder whether the two plays might weave a similar spell.)
In the end, everything works out patly. Too patly, perhaps; the final scene, inevitably, is set in Times Square of V-E day and you don’t need me to tell you the tableaux Ludwig sets before our eyes. If you can have a tableaux with only two people, that is. But that hungrily kissin’ couple in the legendary Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph consists of two very different people, not dad and mom Ludwig. If it seems like the playwright has suddenly borrowed someone else’s story for his climax, it at least serves as an effective final curtain.
Leibhauser and Fortin do admirably well, masking their characters’ self-conscious quirks in their letters while physically demonstrating their vulnerabilities. As with many of the productions presented at 59E59, Dear Jack, Dear Louise is an import from lesser-known regional theatres, Penguin Rep in Stony Point and Shadowland Stages in Ellenville, both upstate. These regional productions often cast their plays with lesser-known performers who—as in this case—are ripe for discovery. Director Stephen Nachamie, who has worked at Penguin Rep and numerous regional houses, does a fine job in helping the actors express what they say (as per the letters) and what they feel. Designer Christian Fleming provides a neat solution for the play, taking advantage of the small stage area. The lighting by Keith A. Truax moves the action along, with a WWII soundtrack from Jeff Knapp. Although given the vast catalogue of contemporary music of the period, why announce the actual date of a letter and then accompany it with a song as yet unwritten?
Playwright Ludwig is well known in these parts, by virtue of his libretto for the recycled Gershwin musical Crazy for You back in 1992. He wrote the long-running farce Lend Me a Tenor and the promising but disappointing farce Moon over Buffalo. All told, he has penned about two dozen plays, mostly adaptations, most of which have been produced regionally. (Dear Jack, Dear Louise originated, in a different production, in 2019 at Arena Stage in Washington.) Ludwig also wrote a fine book, the 2014 “How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare,” which is certainly not only for children. With Dear Jack, Dear Louise, he demonstrates a hitherto unnoticed tenderness.
Dear Jack, Dear Louise opened January 22, 2025, at 59E59 and runs through February 16. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
