Alec Baldwin: A Man Of Words And Letters At Westport Playhouse
Yes, Alec Baldwin has written love letters — and received them, too, no doubt.
This revelation comes during a conversation with Baldwin in relation to the one-night-only performance of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Westport Country Playhouse on Thursday, April 12. He will star opposite Tony Award-winner Kelli O’Hara in the fundraiser for the theater.
The play has the two actors sitting at separate tables as Andrew and Melissa, a straight-arrow Yalie and a free-spirited woman, reading their characters’ correspondence to each other, starting in childhood and continuing over the next 50 years, detailing their experiences and relationships.
A three-time Emmy winner and an Oscar nominee, Baldwin ponders the suggestion if a millennial playwright would have devised “Love Tweets” or “Love Texts?” Writing letters, expressing love or not, has become a lost art, he says.
“I’m a letter writer and my wife, who is quite a bit younger than I am, is always laughing because I am always going off buying boxed sets of museum art cards or ordering stationery from Mount Street in London,” Baldwin says.
In his memoir, “Nevertheless,” which was published last year, his opening sentence shows Baldwin to be a man of letters and its accoutrements: “I like to daydream about having a different kind of life. I’ve wanted to open a stationery store because I was obsessed with fine writing paper, boxed note cards with images of fine art from museums and exquisite pens.”