Dear Reader, Here is a Valentine’s Day treat. I recently saw the play: She Loves Me. It is based on the 1937 play Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklós László. The action takes place in a Budapest perfume shop in the 1930’s. The binding central element behind the story is the exchange of letters between two lonely strangers. Their anonymous “Dear Friend” correspondence is the main focus in each other’s love life.
By chance or fate, George and Amaila end up working in the same perfume shop where they repel each other. When the letters request their initial blind date meeting, the signals are a rose placed on top of a copy of Anna Karenina on the table, and he is to wear a rose in his lapel. George gets cold feet, and takes along a co-worker who pushes him to discovering who is “Dear Friend” actually is. Ashamed by how he has treated Amaila at work, he comes to the table but doesn’t own his “Dear Friend” status. George lies and says he is a messenger from an “old, fat, balding fellow who was called out of town,” and therefore, he couldn’t meet Amaila for dinner.
There is a wonderful scene that follows where Amaila describes her feelings for her “Dear Friend” to a co-worker based upon who she believes him to be through his letters. Amaila says “I feel I know who he is on the inside.” Not knowing what he looks like, what the letters express is more valuable to her than his possible surface appearance (old, fat, and balding).
Finally, after much marvelous singing and dancing (watch video highlights), the lovers meet. The deep connection that their letters have established helps smooth out the previous prickly energy between the two at the perfume shop. And the play ends with George and Amaila dancing together outside under the snowflakes.
What was especially fun for me was the underlining reference to the power of a letter. Both lovers could easily reveal their feelings on paper. I am reminded of Abigail Adam’s quote, “My pen is freer than my tongue.” Perhaps it is the direct connection from the heart to the hand that provides an intimacy with the written word that surpasses most face-to-face encounters. And there is a precious vulnerability when one’s thoughts are exposed on a page in a letter. She Loves Me celebrates this letter phenomena. Amaila summed it up when she said, “I take you out and hold you in my hands.”
Isn’t is amazing what a letter can do? Happy Valentine’s Day. xx, Carol