Half a century ago, Carol Channing was offered the opportunity to take over from Rosalind Russell in the Broadway hit Wonderful Town. The first thing she did was request a meeting with the director, George Abbott, to discuss her character, to explore the role, to dig deep into “the soul” of Ruth Sherwood. “Who is Ruth Sherwood?” she asked.
“Ruth Sherwood is whoever plays her,” said Abbott. “Do you want the job or not?”
Ruth Sherwood is whoever plays her: for a producer, that’s the ideal—a property that isn’t constrained by casting. Wherever you live in the English-speaking world and much of the rest, no matter how small your nearest theater, chances are it’s hosted some touring production of A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters starring a couple of local celebrities, or near-celebrities. Love Letters is exactly what it says: a set of his’n’hers correspondence from a pair of lovers generic enough to be, in Abbott’s words, whoever plays them. In little more than a decade, I’ve seen the play with everyone from legit heavyweights Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards to Ken Howard, formerly of “Dynasty,” and Elizabeth Montgomery, the snub-nosed spellbinder of “Bewitched.” The West End production was typical. Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, then starring as the husband-and-wife detectives of TV’s “Hart to Hart,” sat at a writing desk for two acts reading out letters—in Wagner’s case, with head bent down and his hand guiding his eyes cautiously across the page. At the end,
