Steel Beam offers romantic play, chocolates, champagne

Submitted by Steel Beam Theatre

Give your valentine a romantic evening with Steel Beam Theatre’s special staging of the bittersweet and endearing “Love Letters,” featuring Chicago’s Jay Cook as the very proper Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Steel Beam founder Donna Steele as the rebellious free spirit Melissa Gardner.

Sparks flew when they met on Valentine’s Day in second grade, but these star-crossed friends were separated by the capricious hand of fate, and so share a lifetime through written correspondence, realizing too late that they were soul mates whose better selves were found in the other.

Tickets for “Love Letters” are $35 and include champagne, Graham’s Fine Chocolates, grahamschocolate.com and hors d’oeuvres provided by Preservation Bread & Wine, preservationbreadandwine.com. Show times are at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, and 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, at Steel Beam Theatre, 111 W. Main St., St. Charles. For tickets, visit SteelBeamTheatre.com or call (630) 587-8521.

Jay Cook of Chicago appeared in Steel Beam Theatre’s production of Edward Albee’s “At Home, At The Zoo” in July 2011, a featured show of the inaugural St. Charles Theatre Festival, and has performed at Oil Lamp Theatre and Victory Gardens, among others.

Donna Steele is the founder and artistic director for Steel Beam Theatre and has performed in numerous SBT productions including A.R. Gurney’s “Later Life.” Steele has recently appeared in shows at Victory Gardens, Steep Theatre and First Folio. She received recognition for her work in Circle Theatre’s July 2011 production of “The Women.” Steele will next appear as Amanda Wingfield in the Tennessee Williams masterpiece “The Glass Menagerie” at Steel Beam Theatre, Feb. 17-March 11.