Life through the lines

Love Letters might be one of the least dramatic plays you've seen but also the most warm and touching one in the cold winter. The 100-minute play is pure minimalism.

It just features a man and a woman sitting at two sides of the stage, reading 70 letters written to each other over the previous half-century. All they have on stage are a seesaw and a school blackboard, while off-stage a violin is playing.

Li Zhengguo (the man) and Chen Shufen are elementary school classmates who use the letters to review their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats throughout their separated lives from middle school to death. Only at the sad ending do they realize they were really love letters all along.