Although lovers Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III never make eye contact throughout the entire performance of “Love Letters,” Rita Corn, who plays Melissa, feels that “It’s the most beautiful and touching play ever written.” Local actors, Rita Corn and Ron Bupp will be starring this weekend in A. R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Charlotte Players’ Langdon Playhouse.

First performed in New Haven, Conn. in 1988, the play is about two childhood friends who become lovers. It’s hard to imagine how Melissa, a free spirit destined to become a “hippie” and Andrew, a straight-laced intellectual, could ever connect with one another. The two-act production begins with Melissa and Andrew sending notes to each other in second grade. Their correspondence, consisting of letters sent at various stages of their lives, continues well into the couple’s golden years, and Corn admits that after each performance, she is “brought to tears.” Some of the world’s most talented actors including Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Jeff Daniels, and Tab Hunter and Joyce De Witt have starred in adaptations of the play in Off Broadway productions and in theaters all over the world.