Liberty Town celebrates life and love

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Maggie Bieritz and Scott Metzger star in Liberty Town Productions' "Love Letters."

Updated: February 9, 2012 3:20PM

Love songs, “Love Letters,” food and friendly people — Liberty Town Productions teams up with Mickey Finn’s to offer a Valentine’s Day program they hope will capture some heartfelt sentiments of the day in an entertaining evening.

“We wanted to do something between our bigger shows,” explained Scott Metzger, a Libertyville resident and member of the troupe’s board. He noted that Feb. 14 presented itself as the ideal day, and A.R. Gurney’s epistolary play, “Love Letters” fit the bill.

So Metzger and Maggie Bieritz, of Arlington Heights, will present the two-person play that traces the lifelong relationship of a man and woman through their letters.

Metzger calls “Love Letters” a “dramedy” that has “some very touching moments. It starts you thinking about your own life and relationships.”

Because “Love Letters” requires minimal production, it perfectly suits the friendly Amber Room venue at Mickey Finn’s.

“You don’t have to do much work to make it a great show,” explained Metzger, adding that the Mickey Finn’s owners enthusiastically welcomed this play-and-music concept.

Music to start

The evening will begin with vocals from Libertyville’s Dawn Christine Crowther, accompanied by pianist Laurel Ann Kaiser, of Hawthorn Woods. A free appetizer buffet is included in the admission price, and a cash bar will be available.

To help set the appropriate Valentine’s Day atmosphere, Metzger recruited Crowther, a Libertyville resident, who’s appeared in the last two Liberty Town Productions summer showcases, to open with songs about love and relationships. “She has an amazing, torchy voice,” Metzger said.

Crowther, a songwriter herself who sings regularly with the Lakes Area Swing Band, will perform standards, love songs and some modern tunes. “Songs everyone knows,” she said.

Classics like “Autumn Leaves,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon” and
“My Funny Valentine” are on her
list, along with at least one song originally sung by Christina Aguilera. She’ll give each song a personal polish, she said. “I try to stay a little true to the original style, but I also try to inject a little bit of soul into them, just enough to catch people’s attention.”

Following the music, Metzger and Bieritz present “Love Letters.”

At first, honoring Gurney’s injunction against memorizing the lines, the play appears to be a simple reading from scripts. “But,” said Bieritz. “I call it acting, and I think Scott would agree. It’s just acting without that memorization thing.”

The story, which covers their whole lives, starts when the two characters are quite young. “In kindergarten, I think,” said Bieritz. “It’s very much a play of memory and nostalgia, and because of that, there are parts in it that will resonate with everyone.”

Differences

The characters share a history, but they’re different in important ways, Metzger explained. She’s an artist, he’s more a business type, and ends up becoming a senator — “a rather stuffy, Republican type.”

While you watch, Metzger said, “They start at the same point and immediately start moving away from each other, but over the years, this incredible relationship develops.”

It is, however, a roller-coaster relationship, which is where the drama of the play lies.

The lack of scenery, props and even movement concentrates the audience more closely on the actors. A bit more pressure, admits Bieritz, because “you only have our faces and our words.”

But she believes she and Metzger have developed the kind of professional bond they’ll need to do justice to the richness of the work. “Our chemistry really comes through our facial expressions,” she said, “and the words Gurney wrote are very beautiful.”