Review: Dear Jack, Dear Louise, Ken Ludwig’s World War II Love Story

I’m typically skeptical of long-distance relationships, but Ken Ludwig has forced me to reconsider. Based on the courtship of his own parents, who began corresponding in 1942 but didn’t meet in person until V-E Day, Dear Jack, Dear Louise is a heartwarming old-timey romantic comedy that offers some surprisingly useful insight in the age of online dating.

A co-production of Penguin Rep Theatre and Shadowland Stages, this off-Broadway debut features Michael Liebhauser as Captain Jacob “Jack” Ludwig and Alexandra Fortin as Louise Rabiner. He’s an army doctor stationed in Oregon. She’s an aspiring actor in New York City. A continent divides them, but they have been set up as pen pals by their respective families, whose Jewish tenacity emerges as the cement reinforcing a genuine bond that stretches across thousands of miles. It’s also the source of some of the funniest moments in the play, like when all 11 of Jack’s aunts show up to the train station, like a Gilbert & Sullivan chorus, to greet Louise when she comes to meet the parents.

Initial formality gives way to first-name familiarity as Louise reveals her wild side (she once played a “lady of the night” in a church basement production of The Threepenny Opera) and the somewhat nervous good boy Jack falls head over heels. They make plans to meet in person as early as 1943, but circumstances (specifically, a world war) keep getting in their way. And when Jack is called to the western front just before the close of the first act, both wonder if they ever will meet.

The major drama of the second act is somewhat undermined by its own existence. We know that Jack survives and gets together with Louse, because Ken is around eight decades later to write their story. Still, Liebhauser and Fortin perform as if that is not a foregone conclusion, conveying the giddy too-good-to-be-true exhilaration of finding a soulmate and the devastating loss that comes with having that feeling ripped away. Both actors are undeniably charming, pulling us into their romance and making us root for them.

Conjuring that kind of chemistry is no easy feat, especially in Stephen Nachamie’s split screen staging, which mostly relegates Jack to his army green cot and writing table stage right and Louise to a world of girly pink fringe (at a Times Square boarding house for young ladies) stage left. The platform on which they perform seems propped up on a mountain of envelopes (the slyly imaginative scenic design is by Christian Fleming, who also designed the period-appropriate costumes). Keith A. Truax casts a nostalgic sepia glow over the stage, while Jeff Knapp delivers the authentic sounds of the 1940s: big band and war.

Viewers expecting a Jewish, World War II-era variation of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters will be disappointed (or, in my case, delighted) by the way Ludwig departs from earlier models of the correspondence play. From the snappy rhythm of the dialogue, one might be led to believe that the USPS once offered lightning-quick service, with the pithy, witty exchanges between Jack and Louise resembling a text exchange in the 21^st century.

But why let realism get in the way of a good love story? At a time when the market for dating has never been vaster, and the expected venue for meeting is increasingly online, Dear Jack, Dear Louise asserts that a love forged by words written thousands of miles apart can blossom, even in the most dire circumstances, provided both parties put in the time and effort.