'Love Letters' final show of GLT's 2008-2009 season

A.R. Guerney's Love Letters is the Gaffney Little Theatre's final play of the 2008-2009 season. The show runs July 16-18 at 7:30 p.m. and closes with a matinee on Sunday, July 19, at 3 p.m.

Tim Baxter-Ferguson, professor of theatre at Limestone College, and his wife, Susan Baxter-Ferguson, who teaches theatre at Gaffney High School, bring this funny and charming show to life.

Guerney has come up with a most unusual theatre concept: two characters sit across from each other at a table and read letters, notes and cards to each other that trace their 50-year relationship. During the time they have known and loved each other, their correspondence reveals their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats, throughout their separated lives.

Melissa Gardner, played by Susan Baxter-Ferguson, portrays a rich spoiled woman who was educated in private schools and is artistic, lascivious, divorced, eventually alcoholic, bipolar and suicidal.

Her correspondent Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, played by Tim Baxter- Ferguson, is square, destined for Yale, a naval officer, lawyer and U.S. senator, who says that "writing letters is what he loves best." Gureney, the playwright, suggests that his emphasis in this play is the importance of writing.

The success of Love Letters is the love-hate relationship that has endured between a man and a woman for 50 years. The audience hardly knows whether to laugh or cry, so they compromise and do both.

Love Letters has had an interesting run since its opening in1988 in New Haven, Conn. Such outstanding and highly acclaimed actors as Carol Burnette, Brian Dennehy, Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek have played the roles of Melissa and Andy. The play has also been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Reservations for the show may be made by calling the Gaffney Little Theatre at 49-4589.