The duo played Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III in the reading of Gurney's much-performed work, which was directed by Michael Mastro. The evening at New World Stages benefited Opening Act, the non-profit organization that "provides free after-school theatre programming to New York City's most under-served public high schools."

Love Letters, according to production notes, "chronicles a relationship solely through written correspondence. The story is about Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner (Peters) whose poignantly funny friendship and ill-fated romance takes them from second grade through adolescence and then into maturity and middle age." The work premiered at Connecticut's Long Wharf Theatre in 1989 with Joanna Gleason and John Rubenstein and has been performed all around the world.

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At left (from top): Bernadette Peters; John Dossett and Bernadette Peters; director Michael Mastro, Michele Pawk and John Dossett; Patricia Connolly and Geoffrey Nauffts; Bernadette Peters and Andrew McCarthy.

Below: Students from Opening Act with director Michael Mastro, John Dossett and Bernadette Peters; John Dossett and Bernadette Peters take their bows for Love Letters.