Jack (Michael Liebhauser) and Louise (Alexandra Fortin) on opposite sides of the stage, and opposite sides of the country.
Ken Ludwig, who’s generally out to make his audiences laugh a lot and not think too hard (Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo, Crazy for You), strikes a more mellow and reflective tone than usual with his latest, Dear Jack, Dear Louise, at 59E59. An epistolary lark, it shares some traits with Pen Pals, still puttering away at St. Clement’s: two characters, a deepening relationship between them, lots of letters, punctuated by dialogue. Again, though, the audience doesn’t have to think too hard: Dear Jack, Dear Louise is friendly and diverting, but it sure is light.
Louise, out to score a Broadway role, is into appearances.
More mellow and reflective, perhaps, because Ludwig is writing about his parents. Jack (Michael Liebhauser) is a shy Army doctor, Louise (Alexandra Fortin) a bouncy would-be Broadway triple threat who can’t catch a break. Their fathers, who are friends, suggested they launch a pen-pals initiative while Jack trains in Medford, Ore., and Louise auditions. Possibly the dads are matchmaking.
To their credit, Liebhauser and Fortin act the letters out; they’re not just sitting at tables and reading them, as in Pen Pals or Love Letters; the actors have memorized them. And Stephen Nachamie, the director, gives them plenty of physical business. But their letters—and who knows how thoroughly Ludwig doctored them?—are mostly less than riveting. Jack’s terseness, his inability to say anything interesting about himself, is a joke that wears thin fast. He tends to talk in clichés, as in describing the French peasants greeting the American soldiers: “They would give us the shirts off their backs.” Louise natters about the theater and her roommate and her passion for dancing; she’s lively, but conventional, lacking in character quirks that would make her more endearing.
Most of the tension revolves around whether these two likable young people are ever going to meet one another face-to-face, and given that they’re the playwright’s parents, there’s not much suspense in that. Repeatedly they attempt a date, only to be done in by Jack’s canceled leave, or Louise’s getting into the national company of Hellzapoppin’, or D-Day. Along the way, Louise meets and charms Jack’s family, a war buddy of Jack’s meets Louise on leave and puts the moves on her, and Jack submits to the wiles of a predatory Army nurse. It’s kind of like one of those wartime romances Hollywood used to crank out, The Clock or The Voice of the Turtle, and if you’re into those, you’ll like it fine.
Jack in a rare unkempt moment. Photographs by Dorice Arden Madronero.
Certainly it’s rich in wartime entertainment references, with cameos in the pair’s letters by Bette Davis, Hedy Lamarr, Ginger Rogers, on and on. Ludwig makes a couple of bad timing errors in these. He has Louise singing the praises of “I Cain’t Say No” in 1942, though Oklahoma! didn’t open until 1943, and detailing the differences between the stage and film versions of Arsenic and Old Lace (she’s up to be a Broadway cast replacement) in 1943, when the movie didn’t come out until 1944. Ludwig is usually neater than this.
But their relationship does blossom, and the actors’ characterizations deepen, a little. Liebhauser has a simple Everyman appeal that finally ripens into something more substantial as he faces real danger in combat. (He’s also quite buff, and spends a lot of the first act in his undershirt.) Fortin, with her instant flirtatiousness and enthusiasm for all things showbiz, establishes a personality quicker, and curries one’s sympathy as she writes twice daily to the missing-in-action Jack. But as a wartime Brooklynite, wouldn’t she have an accent?
No complaints about Christian Fleming’s set and costumes, which get the job done without calling undue attention to themselves (one nice touch: the downstage barrage of opened envelopes), and Jeff Knapp’s sound design keeps the actors happily unmiked while supplying the requisite battle sound effects and snippets of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “For Me and My Gal.” And no real complaints about Dear Jack, Dear Louise, which aims to be nothing more than a nostalgic rom-com, rich in period atmosphere and suffused with the affection that the author clearly feels for his mom and dad. The play does acquire some heft and urgency near the end, as Jack dodges bullets while sewing up soldiers near enemy lines. And the wrap-up, which it’s no spoiler to reveal is the title characters wrapped in a V-E Day embrace, is soul-satisfying. But Dear Jack, Dear Louise, a pleasant evening, needs a little more ... something.
Dear Jack, Dear Louise runs through Feb. 16 at Theater A, 59E59 Theaters (59 E. 59th St.). Evening performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7 p.m. Saturday. Matinees are at 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets may be purchased online at 59e59.org.
Playwright: Ken Ludwig
Director: Stephen Nachamie
Scenic & Costume Design: Christian Fleming
Lighting: Corey Goulden-Naitove
Sound Design: Jeff Knapp
