Love letters to be performed by Lorretta Bailey and Eric Trask at the Lowville United Church on Sunday at 3:00 pm.

By Pepper Parr

July 23, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

Lowville residents and renowned Canadian actors, Lorretta Bailey and Eric Trask, will sit on a stage and, without paying very much attention to each other, they will read “Love Letters”, a play by celebrated playwright A. R. Gurney. It is about kids who are required to find a pen pal at summer camp. In the play, our two characters continue to write to each other throughout their eventful lives. We get their insights into what is going on with their dates, spouses, children, jobs and friends. Funny, sarcastic, witty, angry —- and then they fall in love.

Which is almost exactly what happened when Lorretta and Eric played opposite each other in a production of Saltwater Moon on a Vancouver stage many years ago .

Two seasoned Canadian performers, Lorretta Bailey and Eric Bailey, getting comfortable with their lines as they prepare for a production of the A>R> Gurney play “Love Letters”

“We did not get along” said Lorretta, “we were like oil and water”. The relationship between the actor and the actress was tempestuous for the run of the play. It was three years after the production that one wrote the other – neither will say who wrote the first letter – but today they are a team who have done impressive work on stages across the country.

Lorretta has the higher profile – she played a lead role in Les Miserables for year and a half while Eric will tell you that he is the “king of the understudy” who never had to actually go on stage and do the show. “I was understudy for the magnificent Doug Campbell who was performing in A Man for all Seasons” at Stratford.

Lorretta played the Mother of Terry Fox in the Marathon of Hope, a folk musical about the iconic journey of Terry Fox’s run across Canada to raise money for cancer research. It was a Theatre Sheridan production with seven Sheridan alumni in the cast. Bailey is a Sheridan graduate.

Between the two of them,  Eric and Lorretta have performed separately in hundreds of productions: Brigadoon, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Hanna’s Suitcase, a production that left a deep emotional mark on Eric who was in the original performance at the Young People’s Theatre and in the second run of the play and then the tour across Canada.

The couple that have been a part of Canadian theatre all of their professional lives; Eric came out of Ontario while Lorretta was a Canadian prairie girl – Lethbridge Alberta

Lorretta has worked in the Middle East where she entertained troops in the Golan Heights.

Rehearsing “Love letters” in th garden o their Lowville Home. Lorretta Bailey and Eric Trask prepare for their Sunday performance at the Lowville United church

In conversation the two are past that “oil and water” stage but they are very much two different people fully immersed in theatre who have had their big moments. What comes through is the commitment to theatre – it is not just the business that feeds them – it is what they are, it is what they do and on Sunday afternoon the two will sit side by side on a stage and read letters from the play “Love Letters” – the deftly-wrought dialogue about everything from the joys of writing to depression and divorce is what makes the play a favorite among big-name actors — with pairings that have included Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones and, in Broadway revival, Mia Farrow and Brian Dennehy — is that the lines are not meant to be memorized. The staging is sparse, and the actors read off the page.

If you decide to take in the play – be ready for a sterling performance from two people that know theatre.

Sunday afternoon at 3:00 pm at the Lowville United Church on Guelph Line at Britannia Road; the play is th closing event of the second annual Lowville Festival.