The reticent and late-blooming love between two upper-class WASP characters suggests a Victorian sensibility, but A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" is a contemporary story, expressed as much by what is implied as by what is said.

Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner meet in the second grade at a private school. Prodded toward social graces by their mothers, he writes a formal acceptance letter to attend her birthday party and she answers in kind.

It's the beginning of a lifetime of correspondence between two people who remain fast friends and become, too late in life, brief, but passionate lovers.

Andy is solid, upright and dutiful, an Ivy League product and law school graduate with political ambitions. Melissa is adventurous, with a flair for art and bad taste in men, becoming in her own words "a boozy, but lascivious old broad."

But they keep in touch through a half-century of living. He becomes a senator. She has a failed marriage and a minor reputation as a painter.

For this to work in the theater, the performance requires a powerful subtext. The audience must genuinely feel a vibrant connection between the characters, even before the characters recognize it themselves.

The husband-wife team of Tom and Holly Holowach take on the roles in the production at Paliku Theatre directed by Andrew Meader, and turn in workmanlike performances.

Tom Holowach makes Andy solid without being too smug, capable of insight when nudged out of his self-righteousness.

Holly Holowach gives Melissa a mild wild streak, not bad enough to be disliked but self-destructive enough to care about.

The characters sit at desks through most of the performance, never making eye contact and reading snatches of their correspondence straight to the audience. A setting of rich area rugs and designer desks underscores their wealth, style, and taste.

A continuing dialogue emerges in which they exchange brief sentences and short paragraphs — a lifetime of connecting excerpts.

Andy's last letter is written to Melissa's mother after Melissa's death. Only then does Melissa move toward Andy to briefly touch and comfort him.

While there is enough subtext in the Holowachs' performance to support the characters, it falls short of the intensity that would make them vibrant or memorable. Andy and Melissa are two luxury liners that crisscross paths on separate voyages, doing their duty and controlling their passions when they get too close.

The final tone is a melancholy mixture of sadness and regret, with a weak helping of satisfaction in, mostly, toeing the line.