Production of Ken Ludwig’s WWII romance features strong performances by Miranda Byers and Sean Verdu

Ken Ludwig is best known for high-flying farces like Moon Over Buffalo and Lend Me a Tenor, but his 2020 play Dear Jack, Dear Louise slows things down a bit to tell a real-life story about his parents.

It’s an ideal play for a company like Bailey Theatre, which performs in a small space at the cabin-y Glen Isle Resort off Highway 285. With just two performers and minimal set requirements, Bailey took this heartwarming play about long-distance romance and put together an intimate and well-done production directed by Linda Suttle.

Connected as pen pals through their parents during World War II, Jack Ludwig and Louise Rabiner are destined never to meet during their initial courtship. The set for the first act is simply two desks: one at Jack’s barracks in Medford, OR where he’s an Army doctor; the other in Louise’s bedroom in Brooklyn. She’s an aspiring dancer and actress — a spitfire who’s a polar opposite to the rigid Jack under military orders.

But after the first few stilted letter exchanges, love blooms ever so slowly as the war plods on and one request for leave after another is denied by Jack’s superior officer. Just when it seems they might meet when Jack is granted a pass prior to being sent to Europe, Louise’s acting ship comes in and the two can’t be in the same place at the same time.

This natural tension and growing suspense about when they’ll meet fuels much of the play’s arc in the absence of other action. And Ludwig gives his parents plenty of zingers to add humor along the way. In this production, Suttle cast two magnetic performers in the roles to make it work: Sean Verdu and Miranda Byers.

Verdu is a member of the Springs Ensemble Theatre who’s also appeared in productions by Theatreworks and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. He looks very much like what you might imagine an Army doctor in the 1940s would look like: curly hair, a firm jaw and a wholesome innocence that, across the page, is what draws Louise to him.

Byers is well-known to Colorado audiences through appearances at Vintage Theatre, Veritas Productions/PACE and at Firehouse Theater. (There she appeared in Blithe Spirit, which is the show Louise gets cast in for a touring production during the war.) Dear Jack, Dear Louise works particularly well in a small space where the audience is just steps from the actors on stage. Since the primary action is them reading one another’s letters aloud, believing the emotional reactions on their faces is key, and Verdu and Byers pull this off wonderfully.

Miranda Byers as Louise Rabiner | Photo: Sue Ryan Photography

Love during wartime

While the set is minimal, it does include a privacy screen in Louise’s room where Byers can do quick changes. Ace costumer Rachel Finley has a field day adorning her in period dresses with a bit of a modern cut that highlight Byers’ piercing blue eyes and petite form. Jack, of course, gets blah Army khakis and a pair of burly gaiters around his ankles.

Of course, no one would want to hear two actors literally read letters they’d just received in their entirety. Ludwig’s solution is to transform that exchange into shorter bits that the actors can volley back and forth. It’s more like they’re texting to each other than waiting a week or more to get the next letter. Dramatically, this works works well to enable a repartee that wouldn’t be possible with the stamps-and-envelopes model.

In Act Two, we get a bit more action when Jack is deployed during D-Day and winds up under fire behind enemy lines. I don’t know that it was necessary to have him diving to the floor and crawling around to convey what was happening. This blocking deviates quite a bit from the tone of the rest of the play, and it’s a bit hard to parse since he’s obviously not in letter-writing mode during these action sequences. Some of the sound design in this act also seemed a bit out of the blue compared to the rest of the play.

None of that detracts from the two fine performances turned in by Byers and Verdu — along with Ludwig’s loving and touching script. There’s a highly satisfying ending through blackout that forestalls any need for the couple to say more than that conveyed by a kiss.

Bailey Theatre President and Managing Director Bill Bruner and his team have built a charming little theatre in the mountains with a mandate to hire top talent to give area residents a real option for live performance. And for those coming from the metro area, it’s only about an hour’s drive (or you can stay at one of the newly refurbished cabins at Glen Isle Resort).