Dear Penobscot Theatre:

We’ve known each other for many years, through good times and bad. So I feel emboldened to write this letter to you after last week’s premiere of A.R. Gurney’s two-person romantic drama “Love Letters” at the Opera House. Make no mistake; this is not a love letter. That would be unscrupulous for a theater critic.

It would be fine, however, if you wanted to consider this a letter from a person who, indeed, loves theater. Good theater.

The thing I want to admit to you about “Love Letters” is that I doubted you. I thought: Here’s Artistic Producing Director Mark Torres putting on a play with no props, no set, no stand-out costumes, a small cast and very low expenses. Whom is he fooling? Let’s face it, “Love Letters” has been, since its New York stage debut in 1989, a fund-raiser for limping theaters that need money fast and don’t have the time and resources to put together a full script that has to be, well, memorized. The key is to find two star-studded actors – Whoopi Goldberg, of all unlikelies, has been among the more famous cast members – dress them in Upper East Side clothes, and place them at a table where they pose as Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, friends since childhood. In the course of a two-hour production, the actors read letters from 50 years of a poignant, if star-crossed, relationship.

Because of the WASPy, moneyed themes of elite education, charity balls, ski trips and suburban soirees, the script – if all goes well – has the potential to motivate every audience member in a Brooks Brothers suit to help bankroll the theater.

And perhaps, some of that is true of your production, too. Maybe you were hoping it would further bolster your Extraordinary Friends Campaign, which you started earlier this year to raise money to keep the theater alive. Your public knows the story about how you fell just shy of the $250,000 goal in August but celebrated the funds you did receive as an indication of your staying power.

But “Love Letters”? C’mon. It’s been mounted locally at least four times in the last 10 years. Even if you do add the expertise of Lynne Chase with her moody backdrop washes of red, pink and blue in the lighting design, you can’t possibly shed new light on this old war horse of “benefit” theater.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

The smartest move you made was casting Mark Torres as Andrew. Torres may be the brain behind the business side of your operation, but the man can act. He creates the character straightforwardly, without mugging or mocking. Here is Andy the boy with nervous sexuality. Here is Andy the prude with an Ivy League degree. Here he is the lawyer, the politician, and the dear, sweet friend to Melissa.

Who among us runs in the same social circles as Andrew Makepeace Ladd III? Some perhaps. But Torres moves away from the striations of class and into the chambers of the heart without ever getting out of his chair or using stage tricks. We like and dislike and feel for Andy no matter what our yearly income, and that’s no small triumph for Torres.

It was equally prudent to cast Sharon Zolper as Melissa, a neurotic, rich artist and free spirit. Zolper has the poise, stage maturity and emotional stature to pull off a role that could easily be caricatured as a spoiled, giddy, superficial princess. Gurney gave less to this role, but Zolper adds it back.

This could have been a beefed-up reading. Instead it’s storytelling.

There’s one last point I’d like to make. To me, the important aspect of this production of “Love Letters” is that it sets a high standard of performance, the likes of which I, for one, would appreciate seeing every time I sit in my aisle seat in row K. In all honesty, I found the promise and momentum of the evening rather exciting, and I haven’t always felt that way when I’ve left your theater. This time, I sensed something new, a spirit refocused and rededicated to theater. Good theater.

Penobscot Theatre will present “Love Letters” through Oct. 12 at the Opera House at 131 Main St. in Bangor. For tickets, call 942-3333.