Don Shelby and Nancy Nelson Bring LOVE LETTERS to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres will once again team up in a theatre collaboration with Twin Cities icons, Nancy Nelson & Don Shelby, as they star in LOVE LETTERS at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres for a limited run of performances in September.

CDT Artistic Director Tamara Kangas Erickson stated, “We’re thrilled to bring this show back with original stage direction by the beloved Michael Brindisi, now to be restaged by Janet Hayes Trow. Our audiences have loved this show every time we’ve presented it. Nancy and Don are also our dear friends, which makes this project so meaningful and personal for all of us and our audiences."

This Pulitzer Prize-nominated gem, by American playwright, A.R. Gurney, has graced stages from Broadway and across the world. A two-character play, LOVE LETTERS is the story of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner’s tender and funny relationship and ill-fated romance. It is told through their personal letters to each other from second grade through adolescence, maturity and into middle age, spanning over five decades of their lives. 

Gurney himself describes LOVE LETTERS as “a play which needs no theater, no lengthy rehearsal, no special set, no memorization of lines, and no commitment from its two actors beyond the night of the performance. It is designed to simply be read aloud by two actors of roughly the same age, sitting side-by-side at a table.” As they are read, what is created is an evocative, touching, frequently funny but always telling pair of character studies in which what is implied is as revealing and meaningful as what is actually written. Like many things that appear uncomplicated, LOVE LETTERS is more demanding than it looks. Both actors must be capable of expressing the most subtle nuances through voice alone. 

They must know their parts through and through before taking the stage, even when the script is directly in front of them, there’s no substitution for preparation.  

As the late Michael Brindisi stated, “It’s totally compelling theatre. The play’s the thing. It’s an incredibly intimate two hours of theatre where two characters nurture a high level of drama with a back and forth of their lives through these letters. People will really be drawn to and immersed in this production."

LOVE LETTERS opened on Broadway in October of 1989 and was being presented like a revolving door with a different cast of celebrities every week. It worked well for years and years because people were interested to see their favorite television and film stars on stage and the celebrities could easily commit to short performance stints. LOVE LETTERS is still being presented to this day on a variety of stages across the globe. In May 2020, Sally Field and Bryan Cranston performed an online version of the play during the COVID-19 pandemic to benefit the Actors’ Fund.  

LOVE LETTERS is not new Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, Brindisi directed it three times previously at CDT (1993) to critical acclaim, featuring Susan Long and Alan Hamilton, David Anders and Susan Goeppinger (I Do! I Do! acclaim), and with Marion Ross (“Happy Days”) and her real-life spouse, actor Paul Michael. 

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