“My father says everyone should write letters … it’s a dying art,” writes Andy to Melissa early in the A.R. Gurney play “Love Letters.” The romantic dramedy opens Friday for a short, four-performance run through Valentine’s Day at 2nd Street Theater in Bend.

Letter writing won’t die if Melissa and Andy have any say in the matter. Of course, given the fact that the action takes place over a 50-year period beginning in the 1930s, letter writing doesn’t have to contend with email or texts.

As its title implies, “Love Letters” is told through correspondence — some of it loving, some less so — written to read aloud as they’re written to each other. Their correspondence, which begins when Andy and Melissa are schoolchildren, includes birthday party invitations, postcards and more.

Their missives continue throughout their youth and well into middle age. The two make up the total number of characters in the play, and they seem to have more missed connections than interactions as their individual lives unfold. Nevertheless, as they share the stage, and sometimes respond with quick, telegram-like brevity, it’s as though they’re having a conversation.

Andy, voluble by nature and well-nurtured at home, loves writing. Wealthier Melissa has an unstable home life and what some might call an artist’s temperament. As they grow into adults, we witness their decisions, mistakes, successes and failures — in short, the stuff that makes up life. We also see the ways they hurt each other, mend their relationship and reconnect throughout their separate educations at boarding schools and colleges, wartime adventures and European travels and decidedly different career paths.

She’d also strongly prefer to talk on the phone. But letter writing affords them privacy that comes in handy at times in their lives, and as Andy notes, letters allow the writer to give a piece of himself for the recipient to keep.

Though the two are on decidedly different paths, given the facts of their social status and similar ages, those paths are often parallel and even intersect over the decade condensed into an approximately two-hour show. The result is a strangely sweeping, moving and intimate show.

Presented by Lonely Fish Productions — and directed by Karen Sipes, who serves as chair of Lonely Fish — “Love Letters” stars married couple Todd and Amber Hanson as Andy and Melissa, respectively. A strong script doesn’t hurt, but given the (real-life) duo’s mutual acting chops and obvious chemistry, it’s little wonder they play off each other as well as they do.

“I just thought it was kind of brilliant having a married couple,” said Sipes, who also cast the Hansons last year in the two-person play “Blackbird” at Cascades Theatrical Company in Bend.

“This is my second time directing just the two of them,” Sipes said. “Both times, I just called them up and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this script.’ And both times, they read it, thought it over and said yes. So I didn’t have to look any further.”

The show requires little in the way of set or props other than, say, the addition of a pair of glasses in act two to show Melissa’s aging. In fact, given the sheer amount of goings on around 2nd Street — where local playwright Cricket Daniels’ “The Lost Virginity Tour” opens Feb. 23 — the Hansons and Sipes have convened for rehearsals here and there. This reporter caught them practicing at Coffman Vision Clinic in Bend after hours. They’ve also rehearsed at the Hansons’ Redmond home.

“With both shows, I only live about three blocks away, so I drive over,” she said. “If it has to be 9 or 10 at night, I drive over.”

Readers might recall previous productions of “Love Letters” over the past decade at the Tower Theatre and Cascades Theatre.

Sipes, who hadn’t seen previous productions, mentioned the play a while back to Lonely Fish Artistic Director Scott Schultz, who purchased the script, then sent it her way.

“I’m like, ‘You’re the one who mentioned it. Do you want to direct it?’” Schultz said.

“I read it, and I fell in love with it,” Sipes said. “My immediate thought was it would be really cool to have these two do it.”