Preston Nyman and Eva Feiler to Lead DEAR JACK, DEAR LOUISE UK Premiere At Arcola Theatre

DEAR JACK, DEAR LOUISE, the play by Tony and two-time Olivier Award-winning playwright Ken Ludwig, will receive its UK premiere at Arcola Theatre, directed by Simon Reade.

The production will star Preston Nyman as Jack and Eva Feiler as Louise. Nyman’s theatre credits include Ghost Stories (UK Tour and Peacock Theatre), The Deep Blue Sea (Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath and Theatre Royal Haymarket), and George’s Marvellous Medicine (Curve, Rose Kingston and UK Tour). His film credits include Zazu in Mufasa: The Lion King and Eustace in Agatha Christie’s Crooked House. His television work includes A Small Light, Ridley Road, Stath Lets Flats, Catch-22, Silent Witness, This Country, Doctors, and Doc Martin.

Feiler trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, where she received the Gold Medal and the Michael Bryant Award. Her stage credits include productions of Othello and The Merchant of Venice with the Royal Shakespeare Company, The Divine Mrs S at Hampstead Theatre, Black Chiffon at Park Theatre, The Winter’s Tale at Sheffield Crucible, Square Rounds at the Finborough Theatre, and Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Picture of Dorian Gray at Watermill Theatre. She has also appeared in Northanger Abbey on tour and in Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth at the Royal Festival Hall as part of Shakespeare 400. Her screen work includes We Were the Lucky Ones, Beyond Paradise, Father Brown, and season four of The Crown.

DEAR JACK, DEAR LOUISE is a two-hander drawn from the real love letters exchanged between Ludwig’s parents during World War II. The story follows Jack, a military doctor and U.S. Army captain stationed in Oregon, and Louise, an aspiring Broadway performer living in New York. Though separated by 3,000 miles, the two begin a correspondence that grows from a single letter into hundreds, forming a relationship sustained entirely through the written word.

Director Simon Reade said the play “takes the most intimate and personal and makes it epic by staging it against the jackboot march of world history,” describing Ludwig’s script as “a love letter to his parents” rooted in both comedy and the seriousness of wartime experience.