Love letters weave a web of emotions

LUCKNOW: AR Gurney once famously said Love Letters was a play, "rather a sort of a play, which needs no theatre, no lengthy rehearsal, no special set, no memorisation of lines and no commitment from its two actors beyond the night of performance.'' On Tuesday, when Gurney's Pulitzer Prize winning drama was enacted during the Times Lucknow Festival, it was the stark simplicity of the performance that struck a chord with the audience.
At once, it was deeply personal -- letters of love shared between two persons over a span of more than 50 years -- and yet, it was also immediately open, drawing an instinctive response from the those watching. Each time actors Rajit Kapoor and Shernaz Patel, playing the roles of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, laughed, the audience did too. And they were also together, grieving for Melissa, when Andy delivered his final monologue, before placing a single red rose at her grave.
Being performed on Day 3 of the Times Lucknow Festival, the show opened to a packed auditorium at the Sant Gadge Ji Maharaj Prekshagrah in Gomtinagar. And as Andy and Melissa sat, side-by-side reading aloud notes, letters and cards they had exchanged; discussing every nuance of their separate lives, their dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats, the audience were simply, carried along in time, with them.
If the audience was moved, it wasn't without reason. After all, it was the best in the business they were seeing in action. The play was directed by well-known theatre director Rahul Dacunha, who has productions like `Nuts', `The subject was Rose', `Broadway Bound', `Larins Sahib', `Are the tiger in Congo?', `I ought to be in Pictures', `One for the Road', `Steel Magnolias', `I'm not Baji Rao' and `Six Degrees of Separation' to his credit. DaCunha's Larins Sahib was, in fact, the first Indian play in English to be performed at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival.
The performances of the actors in `Love Letters' were just as mesmerising. From playing a second grade school boy voicing his childhood fantasies, to an in-control American Senator, National award winner Rajit Kapoor, moved dexterously between both roles. Recognised for his long line of film, television and stage work, Kapoor first rose to fame with the popular detective series, `Byomkesh Bakshi' on Doordarshan. Subsequently, Kapoor starred in `Yugantar', `Junoon' and `Duniya'. He also created ripples with his memorable roles in Shyam Benegal's `Suraj Ka Satwa Ghoda' (1993) and Sardari Begam (1996). In the same year, Kapoor played the role of Gandhi in Benegal's `The Making of the Mahatma', for which he won the national award for best actor.
Shernaz Patel, herself a renowned filmmaker and a famous theatre, film and TV actor, was equally convincing in her role as Melissa Gardner. And she swung -- from being a rich, and perhaps, rash youngster, to playing the mature (if slightly wayward) adult, with equal ease. Patel, who has essayed the role of Anne in `The diary of Anne Frank', `Nuts', `Mr Behram', `Veronica's Room', `Letters to My Daughter' and `Six Degrees of Separation', also made her film debut in Mahesh Bhatt's `Janam'(1985), following it with memorable performances in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's `Black' (2005) and more recent `Guzaarish'.