It’s a strange quirk of nature that we only know our grandparents when they are old. It’s only as we ourselves get older that you start to entertain the wider notion of them being, young, alive, free and hopelessly in love. But when New York born, London-raised writer and performer Samantha Streit discovered a horde of hundreds of old love letters exchanged between her own grandparents – who she lost whilst still a young girl – in the summer of 1956 it sparked a series of questions and a surge of creativity that culminated in the ever so charming Letters To Joan.
Alternating between two timelines, this intimate production begins with an imaginary conversation between Sam and her grandfather Len (Kevin Cahill) in an American diner as she bombards him with questions, some of which he answers gently, others – such as ‘why did you not become a lawyer’ spark a more bristly response. Sam wants answers but her grandfather becomes increasingly evasive.
In the alternative scenario, intertwined throughout, Steit takes up the role of grandmother as she and Len exchange passages from their romantic pros.
This gentle drama touches on the evolving nuances of family relationships and delivers oodles of bittersweet nostalgia as we learn how Joan once dreamed of being a playwright, studied playwriting at Columbia University in New York City, just a block from where Samantha later found herself, how they enjoyed eating the same cheese danishes whilst staring at her own pages.
But life took Joan in a different direction of marriage and motherhood, and she never pursued that dream her granddaughter has now pursued. Sadness emerges with underlying undiagnosed illness, that hints at post-natal depression or perhaps dementia, forcing Joan to recluse in her bedroom.
Letters To Joan – a movie waiting to happen.
