Purcellville Gazette, 9/12/08

John Van Eck and Nancy McCarthy’s excellent performance makes “Love Letters” a must see show.

Blue Ridge Leader, 9/12/08

You have to admire a company that ties its own hands before joining the fray.

                Pieces of Eight Players, Loudoun County’s newest theater group, debuted last weekend with “Love Letters,” a play that doesn’t include any of the stuff audiences usually like: no movement, no action, no suspense, and no plot to speak of. The actors are forbidden to approach each other, speak to each other, or even look at each other until the end. All they’re allowed to do is sit at separate tables and read letters to the audience.

                Nancy McCarthy calls it straightjacket acting. “You don’t have any of the conventional crutches,” she says. “You’re completely bound.”

                Why would you launch a theatre company that way?

                “I see this as going back to the heart of what theatre’s always been about: exploring your creative ability,” says John Van Eck, “exploring the craft and giving audiences a chance to experience something different.”

                This play is something different…

                “What happens to what matters most when discourse is limited to what matters least?” I ask myself at intermission. “Soon now they’ll start speaking in detail about the moments I crave to know, or at least they’ll tell stories of some import, something other than these fragments of experience I could have told myself. In fact, I probably have told half of them myself, written half of those letters myself, in essence if not in fact.” Then I realize that since the actors aren’t allowed to move and the letters lack specific information, I’m forced to provide the details myself, from analogous moments in my own life. I realize, in fact, that I’ve been doing that for the last half an hour. In other words, I realize that limiting the discourse to what matters least forces me to provide what matters most.

                At the end of every letter, Van Eck looks up not at Melissa, the person he’s addressing, but at me. Other than turning pages, that’s the only gesture he makes for 90 minutes, so I contemplate it again and again. It’s like he’s talking to her on the phone, while I’m in his living room. It’s as is he wants to confirm that I concur. It’s as if he were reading those letters on my behalf. It’s as if he were reading my letters, while McCarthy sits beside him on the stage. Somehow she seems to be smoking a cigarette all of the time, though she never does anything but read letters, turn pages, and search the air with her lidded eyes.

                At the end of the play, when Van Eck’s face suddenly clouds over, when McCarthy finally turns to look at him with loss and love, all those things they were forbidden to do come to fruition. The list of unnamed things for which they hunger is summarized in his tears and her gaze.

                Director Mike Minnicino, the third member of Pieces of Eight, says the company doesn’t aspire to bring in large audiences. “We want to do smaller, more experimental pieces, which larger companies tend to neglect because they might not fill the house.”

                 In fact the company’s name comes in part from their decision to focus on plays with fewer than eight roles. Minnicino says those small plays provide a satisfying challenge for the actors.

                “Love Letters” runs through this weekend at the Carver Center. With all its restrictions, it may not fill the house, but if these actors continue to grapple with such challenging material, Loudoun audiences are in for some real satisfaction.