Love Letters

Anna Sokolova
Jul 3
2 min read

Updated: Jul 3

1 - 4 July 2026, Sydney

Actor's Pulse Theatre 103 Regent St, Redfern (don't mix up with 500m further Chippendale - the same street number)

The review

“Love letters” is a romantic love and life story told in letters. There are two desks on the stage: one looks like it belongs to a busy politician, and the other is small, with a pile of paper and a pen. Both have a photo frame on them; the person in the picture is not visible, but one can certainly guess.

Melissa and Andy (@keeleyalicetennyson and @maxtfernandez, two actors matching in beauty, youth and talent) will never leave their little islands where they write, never able to reach each other. All their stories, big and small, which they are burning to tell each other, invitations and notes of sympathy, wordy messages and abrupt remarks requesting never touch a subject again, successful and disastrous dates, happy times, desperation, invitations - they all are wrapped in words, referring to either the past or the future. There is hardly any present time.

Max Fernandez and Keeley Tennyson act delicately, slightly muffling the emotions of their Andy and Melissa. There is no hecticness, no dramatic anxiety in the performance, in the narrative about life - decades go by. The vividness comes from a rich palette of intonations and easily readable body language of the dancers, tuned to reflect their emotions. The more dramatic it gets, the quieter it is. When upset or angry, each of the two just quietly turns back to a letter left open and unanswered. Years go by until the long-ripening, years-long brew of heart-squeezing, long-foreshadowed flood of emotions and a fast-paced chain of events swirl them together. Even then, they stay physically separated on the stage, but the attraction between them is thick and discernible, so they feel closely embraced while they do not even reach each other.

This play is somewhat like a watercolour painting, which is nearly transparent, and sensing the invisible is overpowering what is just seen. It feels like there is a third, tangible and perceptible character over there, over Andy and Melissa. Their love, which they hardly understood at first, but then subtly were nursing, not naming it, growing it, treasuring or trying to destroy, living their lives choosing what was right there and then.