Area acting couple to perform 'Love Letters'
Toolbox
By Josh O'Gorman STAFF WRITER - Published: February 4, 2010
CHESTER — Love will be in the air when the Green Mountain Festival Series presents "A Valentine's Event."
The show, set for 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Green Mountain Union High School, will feature Sam and Barbara Lloyd as they perform A.R. Gurney's play "Love Letters" and a performance by local dancer Ashley Hensel-Browning.
"Love Letters," first performed in 1988 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for drama, recounts 50 years in the lives of a man and woman through their letters. The two-person show has featured the pairings of Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards Jr., Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones, and Saturday night, real-life couple Sam and Barbara Lloyd.
Broadway veterans and longtime members of the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company, the Lloyds are well acquainted with the work.
"It's a wonderfully written play that we've performed before at Weston Playhouse," said Sam Lloyd. "It's so well-written it gives the same effect as a production with costumes and sets."
Calling the show "our signature piece," Barbara Lloyd said each time she and Sam perform it they approach it a little differently.
"Every time we do it we bring a little more age and a little more looking back," she said. "We bring a little more to it each time."
Hensel-Browning will open the show with a performance featuring herself, a dance partner from Massachusetts and three students from Springfield High School.
"It's not something that people get to see up here very often," Hensel-Browning said of her modern dance show, which, despite the Valentine's Day theme, deals less with romance and more with the chemistry that holds people together.
"My piece definitely revolves around relationships and what connects us as people, but not necessarily just romantic relationships," she said.
For 25 years, the Green Mountain Festival Series has brought an array of artists to Chester and given the community an excellent way to escape winter cabin fever. For the past 15 years, it has also provided grants for artists to visit local schools. Hensel-Browning recently finished a week during which she taught choreography at Chester-Andover Elementary School.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for students when purchased in advance, and $2 more when purchased at the door. Tickets are available at outlets in Bellows Falls, Chester, Londonderry, Ludlow, Manchester and Springfield. For tickets or more information, call 875-4473 or visit www.greenmountainfestivalseries.com.
josh.ogorman@rutlandherald.com
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