Preview: Real-life drama adds poignancy to 'Love Letters'
November 6, 2014 12:00 AM-
Anne Louise Bannon and Rick McMillan.
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Surprisingly, when Rick McMillan and Anne Louise Bannon, husband and wife, agreed in daunting circumstances to come from Toronto to Pittsburgh to do a special three-performance run of A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters," they hadn't even seen the two-person play, let alone performed it.
They knew about it, of course, because since 1988 it has been performed by just about everyone, and right now it's back on Broadway. Popular with audiences because it recounts a 50-year relationship between a man and a woman that touches many emotions, it's also popular among theaters and performers because the script is entirely of letters, which the actors read, sitting side by side. So it's easy to stage and quick to rehearse.
Where: Heymann Theatre, Stephen Foster Memorial, Oakland.
When: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets: $35 (students $15); a ticket for any one of the three shows can be combined for a ticket for Sunday's postshow reception at The Porch at Schenley for $100; tickets for reception only are $75; 412-624-6568 or www.play.pitt.edu.
But Mr. McMillan and Ms. Bannon hadn't fully considered the emotional impact it might have. Ms. Bannon remembers that when she asked her mother to come with them, she replied, " 'Annie, I can't watch that play with you and Rick,' and she started to cry -- and my mother doesn't cry. It really hit me.' "
"I'm willing to go with it, on whatever emotional journey," says Mr. McMillan. "We'll take the ride wherever it goes."
The context that raises the stakes is that Mr. McMillan, who had has health problems the past few years, was told in January that his illness -- refractory papillary thyroid cancer -- had turned fatal. No operation or radiation will now help.
"There's nothing they can do. It's incurable," he says.
He doesn't know how long he may have.
"That changed our lives, of course," says Ms. Bannon.
That provides poignancy enough for the couple's visit to Pittsburgh -- which they call their second home -- the city where the two Canadians met when he was performing at the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival and she was a graduate theater student at Pitt. Over the years since, they, but mainly he, have performed also at City Theatre, Starlight Productions and PICT. They have a great many friends here.
But multiplying the emotion of this homecoming, with cancer as the subtext, is the story that "Love Letters" tells. It starts out with great humor, but as it traces the ups and downs in a deep and sometimes infuriating friendship, it takes a turn that will inevitably gain resonance from the real-life situation of the two actors.
They are coming at the solicitation of their friend, retired Pitt theater professor Buck Favorini, to raise money for a Pitt theater scholarship. In separate phone interviews -- coincidentally on their 23rd wedding anniversary -- each spoke of their pleasure in that. They come with the help of director David Hogan, who previously did "Love Letters" with Michael Learned and Ralph Waite -- another famous couple to join the play's previous stars, from Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards to Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones and now, on Broadway, Brian Dennehy and Carol Burnett (who just replaced Mia Farrow), with other famous pairs to follow.
Mr. McMillan and Ms. Bannon are also using the occasion as a kind of reunion, not just with their Pittsburgh friends but with the dozen or so Canadian friends coming with them and their college-age daughter, Maggie, who will fly in from California to be with her parents and revisit the city where she spent time as a child.
"I'm most excited about being on stage again with Rick," says Ms. Bannon, a former actress who has turned to teaching but has recently also done a few plays on the side. She admits to worrying especially about how the occasion will affect Maggie. "I anticipate it will be emotionally difficult."
As they face the final part of their life together, they have just moved out of their big house into something smaller ("it reminds us of the places we stayed in in Pittsburgh"). While Ms. Bannon works days as vice principal at the Jean Vanier Catholic Secondary School for students with developmental difficulties, Mr. McMillan has been busy finding furnishings. "He told me he wants to put his stamp on the place," she says.
Mr. McMillan continues to work. He just finished a run in Ibsen's "Enemy of the People," and come spring he will be in a Bollywood version of "Much Ado About Nothing," both at Toronto's fine Tarragon Theatre.
One of Canada's best-known actors on stage and screen, Mr. McMillan is an alumnus of the Stratford and Shaw Festivals and winner of multiple Toronto best actor awards. "Everyone knows the situation and just wants to keep Rick going," says Ms. Bannon.
Including Mr. McMillan. "I feel pretty good," he says. His latest triumph is that he just bought a motorcycle and passed the stringent Canadian license test. "I'm not suicidal," he says reassuringly. "This is something I always wanted to do. You gotta live."
Senior theater critic Christopher Rawson: 412-216-1944.
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