Photo | Lauren L. Wright

Charlotte Northeast and Damon Bonetti

Through Dec. 9, Act II Playhouse, 56 E. Butler Pike, Ambler, 215-654-0200, act2.org.

Though Hate Mail started as a sardonic response to A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters — an oft-produced romance told solely through correspondence that, due to actors not needing to learn lines, has been performed by countless television actors — it’s actually a celebration of the lost art of written correspondence.
Bill Corbett (best known for writing and acting contributions to Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and its bastard child, The Film Crew, but also an accomplished playwright), and Kira Obolensky (Quicksilver, Lobster Alice) wrote Hate Mail in 2004 as letters, sort of an improv in writing. Their inspired tale of a spoiled midwesterner’s written attempts to force a refund for a broken “I-Heart-NY” snow globe from a bitter clerk and would-be artist seems almost impossible these days; do any civilians (i.e., non-journalists or English teachers) use words so well?
Hate Mail is a joy to listen to, as accomplished actors (and real-life couple) Charlotte Northeast (as struggling Manhattan photographer Dahlia) and Damon Bonetti (as Preston, a Minneapolis trust fund baby who rebels by writing complaint letters) recite their missives to each other, never making eye contact.
Unfortunately, director David Stradley doesn’t quite trust them or the material. Ignoring the theater maxim (and specific suggestion from the authors) that “less is definitely more,” he works overtime to disguise the play’s best feature with fussy staging — hell, his production STARTS with a scene change! — that lengthens and deadens the play.
So Hate Mail, which could play splendidly with two music stands, receives walls of yellow and green panels that open to suggest different locations, plus two big puzzling wooden spools and an ugly map of America from Melissa Guyer (it could be a set for some other play, one that needs a set) and extraneous costume changes from Jessica Riser-Milne. Perky production assistant Jessica Galletta dresses up as a postal employee to help, and all this busy cleverness turns what could be a lovely eighty-minute one-act into a labored two-act event.
Preston and Dahlia fall into hate, love, hate, and something sort of like love again (their relationship is like “the Titanic and Watergate together”) through glorious letters (not the monosyllabic laziness of e-mail, until the final scene), ranging from elegantly crafted insults and heartfelt bursts of passion to brief blunt notes punctuated with dead lizards. Despite this production’s counterproductive ambitions, Corbett and Obolensky’s twistedly brilliant correspondence champions a dying art.
See also: Act II.

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