Harris Yulin, Mercedes Ruehl Lead ‘Love Letters’ As Guild Hall Celebrates 90 Years

For one summer evening over the last 15 years, Guild Hall has turned over its John Drew Theater to actor and director Harris Yulin to do with it what he pleases.

And more often than not, he chooses to share the stage with Mercedes Ruehl.

This year is no different.

The two longtime friends and colleagues will reunite at the East Hampton theater for a one-off concert reading of A. R. “Pete” Gurney’s “Love Letters” on Friday night — reconnecting with the quiet simplicity and power of the spoken word, and with one other.

“We are slowly becoming the Lunt-Fontanne of the John Drew Theater,” Ms. Ruehl said with a laugh.

The two-person play centers on Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, whose friendship begins in 1937 when he formally accepts an invitation to her second grade birthday party via letter. Their written correspondence continues this way for five decades, read back and forth by the two actors portraying them — which, today, comprises a long cast of A-listers.

“Love Letters” has toured throughout the United States, Europe and even Pakistan, with talent such as Carol Burnett, Alan Alda, Candice Bergen, Alec Baldwin, Anjelica Huston, Sigourney Weaver, Jeff Daniels, Elizabeth Taylor, James Earl Jones, Christopher Reeve, Martin Sheen, Stockard Channing, Christopher Walken and others stepping into the iconic roles.

“There are those people who’ve said that I was the only actor in the United States who’d never done it,” Mr. Yulin said. “I’d never read ‘Love Letters,’ strangely enough, and I’d never seen it. And so I read it and I was just blown away because I thought, ‘Well, this is a masterpiece.’ It’s really extraordinary on so many levels. So as soon as I read it, I called Mercedes and I said, ‘I think this is it.’”

Dotted with humor, romance and poignancy, the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama follows the dramatically divergent soul mates down a bittersweet path of boarding schools, marriage, children, divorce and missed opportunities — wherein the tragedy lies, Ms. Ruehl said.

“I find the story is universal, it has a universal resonance,” she said. “As somebody once said, there are only seven stories in the world, and everything that’s ever been written is one of those seven stories. And this is a story of loss — of love that should have blossomed and never did.”

Their relationship is provocative and enchanting — both born into wealth and position, he is stiff and dutiful, while she is artistic, rebellious and, ultimately, self-destructive. And, yet, they are drawn to each other platonically, romantically and otherwise.

“It is like slipping on another skin,” Mr. Yulin said of the role. “It’s a reading, of course, so we’re rehearsing it, but we’re not gonna know it — and it’s not meant to be known. It’s meant to be read like that. That is the staging that Pete dictates. It’s just great.

“It transcends itself, it transcends its setting and it gets to something quite universal — and yet, at the same time, completely and utterly specific and personal,” he continued. “It’s a contradiction, but a truism, as well. You get to it through the specific and through the personal, and that’s how you get to the universal. That’s the only road, and that’s what he provides.”

By removing the visuals of a fully staged production, the text becomes the primary focus — which, historically and traditionally, is at the very core of theater, not to mention Guild Hall, now celebrating its 90th season.

“There were a lot of times in those 90 years when Guild Hall just did plays, and it was based on plays in the beginning,” Mr. Yulin said. “In that sense, it’s certainly in the tradition of Guild Hall and there is, for our time, something quintessential about it.”

Ahead of Friday night’s reading, the East Hampton museum and theater will celebrate its 90th birthday on Thursday, starting at 11 a.m., with a tour of “Full of Noises: A Village Soundwalk,” followed by a communal drip painting with the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center from 3 to 5 p.m., and family gallery tours at 3:30 and 4:30 p.m.

“Robert Longo: A History of the Present” will be on view from noon to 8 p.m., and as the sun sets, a video installation by Christine Sciulli, “TimeSpace” will light up the exterior of the building and serve as a backdrop for a silent dance party from 8 to 11 p.m. Inside, “New York Ballet: On & Off Stage” will start at 7:30 p.m.

“Whenever there’s heartfelt stuff going on on that stage, it’s a good thing,” Ms. Ruehl said. “Whenever there’s a good reading there, you remember.”

With each new project, the working relationship between Ms. Ruehl and Mr. Yulin only strengthens and deepens — “especially now as we become older and old friends,” she said — and it is a tradition that she looks forward to every year.

“We sit at a table in his garden or my garden, and if we’re lucky, his wife is home and brings us little treats and San Pellegrino, and if we’re not lucky, we’re stuck with my son who does nothing,” she said with a laugh, “in terms of bringing us wonderful little treats to rehearse with.”

There, reading in one of their sunlit summer gardens, they lose themselves in the text, the story and each other, she said.

“Everything else goes away, all the other problems just disappear for two or three hours of life, and we immerse ourselves in this creative act,” she said. “It’s, ah, it’s a great pleasure to be able to do that.”