by Geoff Hoff

The Letters, by John W. Lowell, is a well written, well produced play about two people in the Ministry of Information in 1931 Russia, now playing at the New Place Studio Theatre, a tiny (read intimate) theatre in the North Hollywood Arts District that has two small rows of seats on two sides of the acting space and one on a third side.  Upon entering the theatre, the audience is confronted with a dark wood-paneled office with a simple, organized desk, several filing cabinets and posters of Stalin and Lenin on the walls that immediately set the mood and tone of the time and locale, if not of the play itself.

Set as an “interview” between The Director (Norman Snow), the bureaucratic head of the department and Anna (Julia Fletcher), a low level functionary, an editor whose task is to rewrite historical documents to conform with official notions and propriety.  The current project is a series of letters written by one of the country’s “Great Composers” that show him to have been quite a perverse and sexually twisted man, something that can not be sanctioned.  The play is ultimately, I suppose, about truth.

I must confess that it would be very difficult to write a review of this play without revealing some of the plot points, something I am loath to do and for which I apologize now.  It is the story of a power struggle between these two, a matching of wits, a cat and mouse game, between the former soldier, quite satisfied with his position of power and his intellectual, but seemingly meek underling.  It starts out being an interview wherein the director is promoting Anna to a position she does not want, as supervisor above her colleagues.

Anna, who has entered the office meekly and nervously to await her first summoning to the director’s office, seems the perfect flustered worker, trying desperately to do and say the right thing so as not to be noticed by the twisted power above her.

As the Director reveals more and more about why he actually has her in the office, however, that he is investigating a plot wherein he suspects that one of her colleagues has copied the actual, original text of the composer’s letters, she transforms, rather quickly and completely, into a very powerful, very confident, very intelligent and knowledgeable woman.  This transformation is one of my main complaints with the play.  It comes about halfway through.  Before it, Anna is a mouse, after it she is a tiger.  There seems no transition between the two.

Ms. Fletcher certainly looks the part, and after her transformation she is quite powerful to watch, although she tends to indicate the meekness at the beginning with self-conscious body positions, facial expressions and business.  In an early moment, for example, she cannot get a cigarette lighter to light, and it is obvious that she is trying to show us she cannot get it to work, rather than just fumbling with it to make it go.

Mr. Snow is fine as the pompous, self-important Director who really enjoys playing with his mouse, or “cockroach” as he calls her, although his understanding of her transformation and what it might mean for him never feels quite organic.

Mr. Lowell’s script is good.  The verbal sparing between the two is interesting to watch and the twists and turns in the exposed “reality” are fascinating, but it never quite reaches the level of danger it aspires to.

The sets and costume, by Dean Cameron are quite good and the lighting by Peter Strauss is functional.  The direction by Anne McNaughton is good, she uses the small space well, although I suspect she could have taken more advantage of the staging as the power between the two begin to shift.

The play is performed Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 pm through April 19th, 2009.

The New Place Studio Theatre is located at 10950 Peach Grove Street in North Hollywood, CA  91601, just off Vineland, one block north of the Vineland/Lankershim/Camarillo intersection in the NoHo Arts District.

Ticket prices: $20.00

Reservations online at https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/951 or by phone at (866) 811-4111.