Love Letters

MICHAEL McGettigan has gone through his share of smartphones and other high-tech gadgets. He bought the first iteration of a PalmPilot and kept branching out from there. But when his Palm Treo broke a couple of years ago, he felt as if he had lost an appendage. McGettigan's minicrisis inspired him to simplify his life. Instead of feeling lost when numbers are locked in a fried phone, McGettigan now relies on a notebook like Filofax to keep all of his pertinent information organized.

English poet John Keats was dying of tuberculosis when he wrote in 1820 to longtime love Fanny Brawne: " 'Tis certain I shall never recover if I am to be so long separate from you. " Keats was leaving soon for Italy, hoping to improve his health. "I cannot live without you," he declared, also warning the sometimes flirtatious Fanny not to write back "unless you can do it with a crystal conscience. "  He died several months later, but his letter and love for Fanny live on this month at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Rittenhouse Square.

The concept of Love Letters - tracing the relationship between a man and a woman over half a century by having two actors read the letters they exchange - doesn't sound all that fascinating, and if a playwright other than A.R. Gurney had written it, it might not be. Gurney is the preeminent theatrical authority on the WASP way of life, and part of the reason this play is such an engrossing affair is that the characters are set in that milieu, which...

Perhaps you've heard - more than 150 prominent actors and actresses have played the roles of Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner in A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" since the play bowed at a reading in the New York Public Library in the spring of 1988. On that occasion, Gurney himself and an actress friend, Holland Taylor, sat in as the first Andy and Melissa. "Love Letters" subsequently played New Haven and off-Broadway. And now the producing team of Thomas Viertel, Steven Baruch and Richard Frankel, who specialize in small-scale productions ("Driving Miss Daisy," "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune")

A romance blossoms, falters and endures through pages and pages of correspondence in A.R. Gurney's bittersweet comedy Love Letters, which is being presented this weekend in Doylestown Borough by the Bucks County Center for the Performing Arts. Bob Griffiths of Erwinna stars as Andrew, and Lelia Matthews of Lambertville, N.J., as Melissa in this two-character play, which follows the relationship from childhood until death. The letters reveal in part how Andrew allowed ambition to override his feelings for Melissa.

Before becoming a bride eight times over, Elizabeth Taylor was a 17-year-old starlet scribbling letters to her first fiance, charting on pale pink stationery his progression from her one-and-only to the one who got away. "I've never known this kind of love before - it's so perfect and complete - and mature," Taylor wrote to William Pawley on May 6, 1949. "I've never loved anyone in my life before one third as much as I love you - and I never will (well, as far as that goes - I'll never love anyone else - period)

Suzanne Roberts had pretty much decided to give up acting when she was asked to play the role of Melissa Gardner in A.R. Gurney's hit play "Love Letters. " Roberts co-stars with Broadway actor Steven Bradbury in the show, which will be performed tonight and Saturday and Sunday nights at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey St. (Sunday is sold out.) She's 78 now, though she doesn't look it. On the other hand, she related, "I was appearing in the Delaware Theater Company's production of 'Skin of Our Teeth' in Wilmington last year and I found that remembering my lines was torture.

They're back. J.R. and Sue Ellen are in town this week, and once again they're falling in and out of love. This time, however, the territory in which their romance is played out is not the estates and board rooms of Dallas oil barons. Instead, they meet, mate and wrangle in the upper-class, WASP world of A.R. Gurney's Love Letters, which runs through Sunday at the Shubert Theater. Love Letters, now in its third Philadelphia run, is both simple and gimmicky. The simplicity lies in the staging: Its two characters sit side by side and read from a lifetime of correspondence that recounts their relationship.

As Valentine's Day approaches, thoughts turn to love. You know, the sentimental type. But what about forbidden love, unrequited love and ill-fated love? What about the flames of passion that are doused before the affair has a chance to blaze? In his play Love Letters, A.R. Gurney provides just this type of twist. A local production starring Michael Learned, who played Olivia on The Waltons, and Gavin MacLeod, captain of The Love Boat, will be presented Jan. 29 and 30 at the Keswick Theater in Glenside.

Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, friends from childhood, took up their pens again last night at the Shubert Theater for a correspondence that makes for a lively, witty and literate evening in the theater. Eli Wallach is Andy Ladd, the square who grows up to be a U.S. senator. Mrs. Wallach - Anne Jackson - is the madcap Melissa, who spends a lifetime throwing spitballs at him through the agency of the U.S. mails. The play is Love Letters; the author, A.R. Gurney.

  I N HONOR of Valentine's Day, we asked Steve and Mia to share excerpts from their favorite columns: Q: My husband lately has been spending all his free time preparing for his fantasy-baseball draft. I didn't expect the honeymoon to last forever, but I refuse to be a sports widow at age 28. STEVE: As the philosopher Sparky Anderson once said, "There are two things that every man thinks he can do better than every other man: make love to a woman and manage a baseball team.

Jay H. Lipson, 92, of Garnet Valley, a real estate broker and appraiser in the Philadelphia region for a half-century, died of cancer Sunday, Dec. 9, at his home. Mr. Lipson was a self-employed Realtor for many years. In 1950, he opened his first real estate office in West Philadelphia, often showing homes on nights and weekends. His second office was in Upper Darby. He earned certification in real estate appraisal and became one of the area's first to pursue that specialty, his family said.

NEW YORK - The man charged with killing 6-year-old Etan Patz in 1979 made a false confession and will plead not guilty in a case that catalyzed the missing-children's movement, his attorney said Thursday. Pedro Hernandez is mentally ill and his admission is "not reliable," his lawyer, Harvey Fishbein, said after Hernandez made a brief court appearance. "The really sad part of this case is that it . . . will not tell the city what happened to Etan Patz," Fishbein said. Eurozone faces first recession in 3 years LONDON - After two straight quarters of falling output, the 17-country eurozone has fallen back into recession for the first time in three years.

Skyfall , the 23d James Bond film, hauled in a franchise-record of $87.8 million in its first weekend at U.S. theaters. We at "Sideshow" know it's because Daniel Craig is the most dashing Bond in the history of Bonds. Please, Hollywood, don't let him go! Or, let him go and send him to stay in Philadelphia. Either way . . .   Pretty good for a smock Follow the yellow brick road: Judy Garland 's blue pinafore from The Wizard of Oz nabbed $480,000 at Julien's auction of Hollywood memorabilia over the weekend, $441,600 more than Julie Andrews' Sound of Music dress fetched.

The newly reopened Bucks County Playhouse is already planning a world premiere, and a high-level one, too: a production based on Stephen King's novel Misery , which the playhouse will produce along with two big backers, Warner Bros. and Castle Rock Entertainment. The playhouse, in New Hope, named no cast in an announcement of the premiere Thursday, but listed a creative team that is mostly Broadway-based. It's not unusual for the 50-plus professional stages in metropolitan Philadelphia to stage world premieres - about a fourth of all plays performed here are being done for the first time.

The newly reopened Bucks County Playhouse is already planning a world premiere, and a high-level one, too: a production based on Stephen King's novel Misery , which the playhouse will produce along with two big backers, Warner Brothers and Castle Rock Entertainment. The playhouse, in New Hope, named no cast in an announcement of the premiere Thursday, but it listed a creative team that is mostly Broadway-based. It's not unusual for the 50-plus professional stages in metropolitan Philadelphia to stage world premieres - about a fourth of all plays performed here are being done for the first time.

I'm concerned that hoarding is getting a bad name. And I blame cable. I say this because I'm not a fan of clutter, but there are definitely things I save, even though I could end up on A&E. Once again, it's not my fault. Even my faults are not my fault. Yes, that's the kind of grade-A attitude that got me divorced twice. Don't try it at home. In our culture, we get a mixed message about saving. It used to be that saving was a good thing. You saved time, you saved money, and you saved yourself for marriage.

Joan Stein, 59, a Tony-winning theater and television producer who helped to launch several long-running L.A. stage productions, including Love Letters , Forever Plaid and Steve Martin's Picasso at the Lapin Agile , died Friday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A Hollywood resident, she had been diagnosed four weeks ago with a rare type of cancer affecting the appendix, said her husband, Ted Weiant. In 1999, Ms. Stein won a Tony Award as one of the producers of the Broadway play Side Man , a drama set in the postwar jazz world.

It seems the only good conservative president is either a dead conservative president or one so far removed from office that his political influence is limited. That's the conclusion that can be drawn from the recent media lovefest surrounding George H.W. Bush and, before him, Ronald Reagan. The sentimental treatment of Bush began a few months back with endearing references to the former president's ... socks. The paeans reached their culmination last month on his 88th birthday.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - The clearest portrait of Jerry Sandusky to emerge during the trial that ended Friday night with his conviction may have been the one hardly anybody saw. It was lunchtime Monday, the defense was beginning to present its case, and the proceedings had broken for lunch. The jury had been led out of the courtroom. The attorneys were gone. All but a handful of the roughly 180 spectators and reporters had departed. That's when a few stragglers still in the courthouse annex, watching the closed-circuit TV feed from the courtroom, noticed a curious scene.