FringeReview UK 2026
Dear Jack, Dear Louise
Arcola Theatre, Dalston, Bloomberg Philanthropies
Genre: Adaptation, American Theater, Biographical Drama, Comedic, Costume, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Arcola Theatre, Studio 1
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Dear Jack, Dear Louise dramatizes letters between Ludwig’s parents through June 1942-May 1945. The war might keep them from meeting, but it evidently wasn’t too late. Premiered in 2019, its UK premiere stars Preston Nyman and Eva Feiler. Directed by Simon Reade at the Arcola’s Studio 1, it runs till May 2.
Dear Jack, Dear Louise is both a loveable two-hander and a deeply satisfying true-romance. The war’s an all-too-convincing plotter. Absorbing, a must-see.
Review
Epistolary romances thrive in novels, but (even more than Helene Hanff’s 84 Charing Cross Road) this absorbing two-hander by Olivier and Tony Award-winning Ken Ludwig is engrossing and personal. Dear Jack, Dear Louise dramatizes letters between Ludwig’s parents through June 1942-May 1945. The war might keep them from meeting, but unlike Hanff’s perpetual delays, it evidently wasn’t too late. Premiered in 2019, its UK premiere stars Preston Nyman and Eva Feiler. Directed by Simon Reade at the Arcola’s Studio 1, it runs till May 2.
On one level it’s pitched as comedy: the doctor and the dancer, or surgeon and showgirl. Two old friends decide that the son of one, shy doctor (now captain) Jacob Ludwig, really should get to know New York-based actor Louise Rabiner: someone whose exuberance is determined to break through the stiff formality of his approach. She’s trying to make it as an actress and where necessary dancer on Broadway. Opening sallies of “Captain Jacob S Ludwig, US Army” persist till they turn into a gag-line.
Jack’s based in Medford, many miles away, and his C.O. Colonel Ramsay won’t grant leave. As silences (taken badly at first by Louise) are due to Jack being rushed off to hospital ships to tend the badly-burned and wounded, the shadow of danger and overseas posting grows. Everything’s kept in check by pitch and variety, lighting and sound, as well as movement: where Sam Spencer Lane’s choreography finally flourishes. Just as well: for Louise is determined to teach the petrified Jack to dance when they finally meet.
Louise somehow gets to Jacks parents’ house in Coatesville (west of Philadelphia, quite a way out too), so meets everyone except him. And initially to Jack’s terror: as eleven aunts manage to chase away prospective girlfriends with relentless criticism (a virtuosic list as rendered by Nyman). And Louise is nearly “murdered” in a picaresque stayover moment.
At one point Richard Williamson’s liminal lighting suffuses Feiler with a black-and-white-like glow as Louise rehearses two characters from Arsenic and Old Lace for audition. It’s wittily dispatched by Feiler. That’s before Louise is “betrayed”. Before another, telegrams are exchanged. Jamie Lu’s sound is often pinpoint and sparing, except the soft blare of Forties hits and the seismic shocks of what comes later. At this point Jack encourages Louise in her audition choice. She finally gets her break in a Broadway national tour. So can they meet on a leg of it?
Nyman’s slowly unbending, indeed sweet Jack is a delight: no prig, he’s occasionally wrong-footed early on when Louise thinks she’s shocked him. For instance her mentioning her first role as “street-walker” in fact being Low-Dive Jenny in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Which she hastily explains having not heard back, was written by a famous dramatist and in fact based on an eighteenth-century play. And so on. Jack’s not shockable after all: he was on urgent surgery business. And as correspondence deepens a confidence in each other’s tone allows an audible relaxation in the actors’ voices, warming their exchanges.
Feiler’s always direct “pushy” Louise ensures lengthy expositions at the start are never dull. Ludwig also interpolates one-liner conversations: a kind of mobile-texting version of much longer letters perhaps. This allows potentially static tableaux to breathe. Latterly textures lighten, the play speeds up.
Indeed swearing and other intimacies develop. Feiler hasn’t so striking an emotional development to undergo. Louise’s life is punctuated by anxieties, crushing setbacks and whooping wins. But as Feiler so rivetingly plays Louise, it’s clear Louise is a little volatile and romantic, always wired to highs and lows but with a freshness both resilient and fundamentally optimistic. She’s even prepared to drop everything to meet Jack, who’s more careful of her career at this point than she is. Though Jack necessarily doesn’t riffle through many costume changes in his khaki, Louise does, and Feiler speed-dresses in a low dazzle of Forties fashion a struggling but aspiring actor might wear: there’s telling details. The hat’s not ugly fashion pillbox but a softer beige Thirties model.
Till the very end no eye-contact occurs. Nevertheless there’s chemistry and warmth between Feiler and Nyman as the two searchingly look past each other into the future without bombs. Louise is alarmed by Jack’s dangers, and whilst never overstating it, Feiler semaphores how Louise is both terrified yet stoic. Theirs was, Ludwig writes in his notes, a heroic generation. Certainly the times made choices starkly clear.
Indeed Jack is given to hero-worshipping Churchill: the one book he’s really read is the statesman’s My Early Life, from which Nyman quotes. It mightn’t quite be on the gleeful level of Arsenic and Old Lace but it’s surprising, and moving. Nyman also relishes the dry humour of a “last meeting” before going overseas when there hasn’t been a first. Feiler’s Louise gets snappy at that. Dry humour isn’t Louise’s thing.
Nevertheless there’s more stumbling blocks even than war. Though Jack can’t get to see Louise, Jack’s best friend the dazzlingly handsome Greg can. He’s promptly set up on a date by Louise with a fellow cast-member (which goes swimmingly), but is also wowed by Louise. One conversation has a devastating effect.
Robert Innes Hopkins’ economic set involves a magical net above, where numerous letters suspend like hopeful stars. Below it starts out with an army desk and typewriter where Jack stand stolidly, opposite the lighter-looking dressing-table and clothes-rail area inhabited by Louise in New York. She even writes with what looks like a feather-quill pen. Gradually the pair move more fluidly around the space; latterly the army is cleared away in a groundsheet, including the latter portrait of Louise Jack keeps on his desk. Neither see each other. Till of course they have to.
What emerges most of all over two hours with interval, is the sheer goodness and decency of this couple. Theirs is a world where everyone seems fighting for a better one: one where compassion is laced with awareness – just briefly – of prejudice and evil. Both of them Jewish, Louise says blithely of Jack’s mother to him: “She’s out of a Norman Rockwell painting if Norman Rockwell painted Jews.” Later still, Jack talks of Germans quite early admitting to atrocities (including massacres of entire French villages) and the soon-familiar strapline: “just obeying orders”. His first-hand confrontation with the banality of evil still comes across with the shock of discovery.
Superbly acted, directed and produced, Dear Jack, Dear Louise is also helped by the original letters’ frequent wit and panache: which offset the reflectiveness and dangers springing into life. It’s both a loveable two-hander and a deeply satisfying true-romance. One where there need be no eternal deferral of the first and final coming-together. The war’s an all-too-convincing plotter. Absorbing, a must-see.
Accent Coach Aundrea Fudge, Costume Supervisor Catherine Watt, Production Manager Herbe Walmsley. Stage Manager (on book) Rosie Fleming, ASM Mikaela Mondlane, Casting Director Ginny Schiller CDG.
