There’s an Old World quality to how the epistolary romance begins between the title characters of “Dear Jack, Dear Louise,” a 2019 play by Ken Ludwig now in production at Shaker Bridge Theatre.
“Old World” not only because the two young people corresponding with each other lean back toward the 19th century more than toward the 21st, and toward Europe, but also because from our vantage point the play’s setting, in the 1940s, is an old world, too.
Jack, or more accurately, Capt. Jacob S. Ludwig, U.S. Army, a recent medical school graduate now stationed in Medford, Oregon, writes to Louise Rabiner, an aspiring dancer and actor in Brooklyn, at the suggestion of his father, who is friends with Louise’s father. The year is 1942.
The title characters aren’t merely based on Ken Ludwig’s parents. This was how they met, through a steady exchange of letters during World War II. Ludwig, a two-time Tony Award-winning playwright best known for the comedies “Lend Me a Tenor” and “Moon Over Buffalo,” wrote “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” to honor them.
At the start of this smartly staged and acted production at Shaker Bridge, Jack comes off as a bit of a clammy nebbish, officious in the way of a newish draftee, and a bit shy with the more urbane and socially fluent Louise. As their correspondence unfolds, what viewers are privy to is not only a burgeoning relationship and the making of two adults, but a sense of the power and primacy of a personal story in momentous times.
The beauty of a play that unfolds in letters is that the playwright gets to have it both ways, with actors delivering lines that give voice to the writing, which is how we hear Jack’s awkwardness and the sharp Ts at the end of words in Louise’s New York accent. Ludwig makes full use of this, with passages from letters at times giving way to dialogue.
The stretch of time over which the play unfolds also gives the actors an unusual job. Tommy Crawford, an actor, musician and composer who relocated to the Upper Valley, has to embody how military service, and his communication with Louise are changing him. Louise, who lives in a boarding house and is auditioning for theater roles, slowly sheds her accent as she grows into her professional life, and Allie Seibold, a New Yorker who was in Shaker Bridge’s “The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley” last year, makes that development a seamless one.
Since there isn’t much suspense, as viewers know that Jack and Louise will meet and marry and parent the playwright, the drama of the play stems entirely from the characters and their words back and forth, and from the times they’re living through. Ludwig has lavished care on how the young couple develops. The heightened times they’re living in, and that keep them apart, generate all the narrative tension he needs, so he can focus on their character. And director Bill Coons, Shaker Bridge’s founder, adroitly wrings out the story’s warmth and pathos.
“Tell me about yourself,” Jack and Louise ask each other, though Louise also learns about Jack through proximity to his family, with whom she eventually visits in Pennsylvania.
“You’re a doctor and you didn’t even tell me?” Louise points out, a gloss on the ageless joke among Jewish parents.
And an early bit of dialogue unfolds like this:
Louise: “Do you dance?”
Jack: “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because no one ever taught me.”
Just that small exchange tells us a lot about Louise’s forwardness and zeal and Jack’s diffidence and shyness. Louise soon describes her love for the theater and Jack responds, “I don’t feel as passionate as that about anything.”
While the acting and directing are excellent, the production isn’t wrinkle-free. It surprised me a little that the actors wore microphones, though as the play went on, it seemed clear that it was a necessary element of the overall sound design. If a small chamber piece like this requires microphones, it seems likely we’ll never see an unamplified piece of theater on an Upper Valley stage again.
That’s just an observation, though. The design of the show does what’s needed, confidently and without froufrou.
The war, the ostensible reason for their letters and the barrier that keeps the young lovers apart, carries on, and so do the letters. It would be hard, I suspect, for two people in their 20s today to imagine such circumstances, given the ease of communication.
One of the questions that always piques my curiosity is why a director chooses a particular play at a particular time. The obvious answer here is that Coons saw an opportunity to present a play by a major American dramatist and took it.
But “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” is also a timely reminder that even as major historical events are unfolding, people are going about their lives, making plans, falling in love, comforting each other. Two voices can make a world. Shaker Bridge isn’t offering some kind of Christmas spectacle, but instead is doing what the small company does best — putting ordinary human warmth in the foreground and hard times in the background. It might be just the kind of story we need in this cold, dark season.
Shaker Bridge Theatre’s production of “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” runs through Dec. 21 in the Briggs Opera House in White River Junction. For tickets ($28 to $48) and more information go to shakerbridgetheatre.org or call 802-281-6848.