‘Love Letters’ returns to Black Box Theatre Feb. 14 for Valentine’s Day

No Strings Theatre Company (NSTC) presents "Love Letters" at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14 at Black Box Theatre, 430 N. Main St. Downtown.

It will be performed by husband and wife and veteran Las Cruces actors Marissa Bond and Rafael Medina reading the roles of Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III in the play written by A.R. Gurney (1930-2017).

“It has been a number of years since NSTC last presented A.R. Gurney's enchanting reading,” said BBT co-owner Ceil Herman. “The play has gained a unique reputation all over the United States and overseas owing to the celebrity casts who performed it throughout the 1990s.

Bond and Medina performed together in Las Cruces Community Theatre's “The Mousetrap” 10 years ago, and more recently in NSTC's “Nora,” Herman said. In 2020, Bond (a former Las Cruces Bulletin writer and editor) directed Eugene Ionesco's “The Killing Game.”

Herman called “Love Letters” “a truly unique and imaginative theater piece” which, in the words of playwright Gurney, "needs no theater, no lengthy rehearsal, no special set, no memorization of lines, and no commitment from its two actors beyond the night of performance."

The letters, as the actors read them, create an evocative, touching, frequently funny, but always telling pair of character studies.

The play was first performed at the New York Public Library, with Gurney and Holland Taylor reading Ladd and Gardner. It opened on stage at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut in 1988 with Joanna Gleason and John Rubinstein. In 1980, Rubenstein won a Tony award for her performance in “Children of a Letter God,” by Las Cruces playwright Mark Medoff.

Tickets are $15 regular admission and $12 for students and seniors over 65.

To reserve tickets for “Love Letters,” call 575-523-1223 or visit www.no-strings.org.