Broadway’s Best Shows continues their Spotlight on Plays series on Thursday, May 21 when Bryan Cranston (Network on Broadway; Breaking Bad) and Sally Field (The Glass Menagerie on Broadway; Lincoln) team up to read A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. The performance takes place at 8 PM EDT/5 PM PDT and can be found on The Actors Fund YouTube channel and Broadway’s Best Shows YouTube channel and Facebook page.
Good news! For those who cannot see the reading at 8 PM EDT/5 PM PDT, there will be a second streaming of this reading at 11 PM EDT/8 PM PDT. You now have two chances to see Love Letters.
This play, which has been performed all over the world, has a relatively simple premise (and one that lends itself for a reading “in quarantine.”) Two actors, seated next to each other, read the numerous letters they exchanged between one another over the years. The first letter was written when they were seven and the letter-writing continues for five decades.
Cranston reads the part of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. Field reads the part of Melissa Gardner. They both come from wealthy families. Over the fifty years of these letters, success and failure in school, war, marriage, politics, love, parenting and more are the stories and topics discussed in these letters.
Cranston appeared on Broadway in the plays All The Way in 2014 and Network in 2018-2019. He won Tony Awards for both performances. He won four Emmy Awards for his performance as Walter White in Breaking Bad. He was in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, Argo, as Jack O’Donnell.
Field appeared on Broadway in the plays The Goat, or Who is Sylvia in 2002 and was Tony-nominated for her performance as Amanda Wingfield in the 2017 production of The Glass Menagerie. She is a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and won Academy Awards for her performances in Norma Rae and Places in the Heart.
Jerry Zaks, who won back-to-back Tony Awards for directing a play (Six Degrees of Separation) and a musical (a revival of Guys and Dolls) directs this reading. He’s the director of Mrs. Doubtfire on Broadway and the upcoming revival of The Music Man.
Playwright Gurney, who passed away in 2017, had four plays on Broadway: The Golden Age, Sweet Sue, Sylvia and two productions of Love Letters. In 1990 Love Letters was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. (The winner that year was August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.)
As with the two previous Spotlight on Plays performances (November, Significant Other), these readings are free, but are designed as fundraisers for The Actors Fund and their Covid-19 Emergency Assistance.
Remember that these events are not archived for later viewing.
Update: This post has been updated to include a second showing of this reading.
Photo of Bryan Cranston and the company of Network by Jan Versweyveld