When Yale student Max Ritvo applied for a place on Sarah Ruhl’s playwriting workshop, his letter went into the reject pile, but Professor Ruhl pulled it out and found a place for the self-described “poet and comedian”.
Their student and mentor relationship developed into a deep friendship. After the recurrence of the Ewing’s carcinoma, a cancer he had suffered as a schoolboy, and especially after his graduation, they corresponded regularly, sharing their poetry and discussing everything from pop music to ideas about an afterlife. There was a plan to turn their correspondence into a book, and, following Max’s death, Sarah did that and it forms the basis of this play which captures the essence of two complex characters and the bond between them.
It is not two actors reading what they wrote to each other. It feels alive, a genuine dialogue. Blanche McIntyre’s direction makes them dramatically interactive. Dick Bird’s traverse setting has reflective end walls and a sheet of glass hanging centrally that reflects the audience back at itself as well as seeing through to those on the other side. It emphasises intimacy and duplicates the actors seen clear-cut under Guy Hoare’s precise lighting as they move around the space in fresh confrontations.
It isn’t a two-hander either. Ruhl’s script includes a musician. Here, it is composer and cellist Laura Moody, her music not incidental but part of the conversation, the player as well as her playing making connection.
Both Sirine Saba’s Ruhl and Eric Sirakian’s Ritvo take themselves very seriously, saved from seeming too pretentious by some comic exchanges. Their constant repositioning around the space punctuates and energises exchanges. Sirakin was a fellow student of Ritvo’s at one time so knew him. Was Max really so irritatingly eager and shouty? Yet he makes him at the same time so likeable. There is a moment when he lies aligned beneath the hanging glass to represent a body scan that will connect with anyone who has had that experience. It shows us the vulnerability beneath his resilience.
Saba’s Ruhl is much less overtly dramatic, as much the ordinary mum as the playwright professor. The soft consonants of her American accent that sometimes elide a whole sentence contrast this Sirakian’s forceful delivery (and sometimes make one miss things), but there is no doubt of the feeling that she has for the student from whom she finds herself learning.
There are passing references to Ruhl’s family and Ritvo’s girlfriends, but the play does not explore their private lives. It limits itself to their letters and e-mails. It's a cerebral piece that is also a caring eulogy. This production's reflections make you think about the real person behind the surface behaviour and, more darkly, where cancer could be hiding, but Letters from Max gains a positive vibe from its dynamic performance.