A.R. Gurney’s two-person play “Love Letters” shows up every year like a birthday card from an old friend. It’s an easy show to do with such a small cast, and it’s a cinch to perform because it’s written into the play that the actors have the scripts in front of them.

But it’s not always an easy play to perform well. Catching the nuances of the written conversations between Gurney’s characters is tricky. Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III, whose several decades of correspondences make up the show, are certainly types. They are rich white kids, who grow up to be rich white adults with problems that stem from having too much rather than too little.

For an actor, the difficult part is humanizing Melissa and Andy — taking them out of their stereotypes and showing that they are, in their own ways, both the haves and the have-nots. In the Northern Lights Theatre production currently playing at Thistle’s Restaurant in Bangor, actors Cate Davis and Kent McKusick do just that.

Davis perceptively picks up on Melissa’s wit and sharp mind. She lets Melissa tell a lifetime of racy and raw stories, and whether it’s in a one-liner or a monologue, Davis shows that there’s more to Melissa than her spoiled little girl routine (which is entertainingly a part of Davis’ performance, too).

McKusick is particularly sweet in this role. He shows Andy the romantic, Andy the politician, Andy the sap, and Andy the dear friend — and they all flow together in a series of letters that McKusick delivers with mellifluous gentility. Andy’s politics can be pretty repulsive, but McKusick does what any successful politician can do: He makes them work onstage.

It would be so easy to dismiss Melissa and Andy and their moneyed malaise, but Davis and McKusick never slip into cynicism. They show Gurney’s characters as real people in search of love and success and connection — just like so many of us.

Throughout the performance, the actors sit side by side and read from the script, addressing each other vocally but looking at the audience. It’s a clean and simple delivery of a story. You may long to see their eyes meet, or at least to have them read so their eyes are more directly visible to the audience. But letter writing — and letter reading — can sometimes be disconcertingly introverted that way.

Melissa and Andy are thrust together in grade school by family circumstances, go their own ways as adults, and eventually — after marriages, children, nervous breakdowns, addictions, suffering and losses (mostly in Melissa’s life) — they choose their friendship out of a deep love for one another. That’s not the end of the show, but it would be unfair to reveal that last letter.

Suffice it to say that at the end of the two-hour production, there’s likely to be a few tears falling in the audience.

Northern Lights Theatre will present “Love Letters” 8 p.m. Sept. 16-17 at Thistle’s Restaurant, 175 Exchange St. in Bangor. For tickets, call 945-5480.