RIDGEFIELD — As far as actors and classic sitcom heartthrobs Hal Linden and Barbara Eden are concerned, when it comes to their lines in A.R. Gurney’s poignant play, Love Letters, every word should be exactly as the playwright intended when he wrote it in the late 1980s.

Both recently spoke to The Newtown Bee about their on-again, off-again work in the show as their latest production together readies a stop March 2 at the Ridgefield Playhouse.

“If you’re in the theater, you don’t change the words somebody wrote, you know,” Linden said, “Those are Gurney’s words. The point is what you mean when you say the words, and what you’re feeling when you say the words. That’s what sings out over the footlights and into the audience.”

“You don’t mess with this script,” Eden concurred. “This piece is so beautifully written; you don’t improvise a word of it.”

Love Letters and its creator have important Connecticut connections, as Gurney graduated from Yale School of Drama in 1958. While there, he famously wrote Love in Buffalo, the first musical ever produced at the school of drama, according to Wikipedia.

Flash forward 30 years.

After Love Letters was first performed professionally by Gurney himself — alongside Holland Taylor at New York Public Library — it began a memorable 1988 run right back in New Haven at Long Wharf Theatre.

The Ridgefield Playhouse audience will see Eden and Linden transform into rebellious Melissa Gardner and straight-arrow Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. From second grade, through summer vacations, to college, and well into adulthood, they spend a lifetime discussing their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, and victories and defeats.

But long after the letters are done, the real question remains: Have they made the right choices, or is the love of their life only a letter away?

The role is not a stretch for Linden, who began his career on Broadway in musicals like On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and The Pajama Game, and capturing a 1971 Tony for his role in The Rothschilds. This led to television roles, including the Emmy winning Barney Miller.

When Love Letters was first produced, Linden said he played the role of Ladd with several actresses who he does not name, but remembers clearly.

“It’s interesting,” he said. “For different people, it’s a different play, depending on their vision of it. I’ve done it with a comedian, who found all the funny things, and with a serious actress, who found all the dramatic themes.”

For Eden, Love Letters provided a chance to perform alongside Linden as well as with her late TV co-star Larry Hagman — who became a household name as her “master” in a whimsical sitcom called I Dream of Jeanne.

Beside that unforgettable role, Eden was featured in more than 20 theatrical feature films and made-for-television movies, including Harper Valley PTA, Chattanooga Choo Choo, and Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea. On stage, she has appeared in touring productions of The Sound of Music and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Eden said she always played her role in Love Letters the same way, whether it was Linden or Hagman sitting beside her.

“Both Hal and Larry are fine actors. There aren’t many that good,” she said. “So maybe their performance took on different nuances with Larry in the mind of our audiences, because they knew us so well as co-stars together. But as far as I was concerned, the same energy is there with both of them. That’s probably because they both had the same view of the character they were playing.”

During their chat, the co-stars confessed an affinity for the characters who sit side-by-side reading correspondence.

“I think it’s the amazing concept of the whole piece,” he said. “You’re basically sitting watching two people write love letters. There’s no interaction — we don’t talk to each other at all during the entire play. It’s amazing to me that Gurney was able to turn that enterprise into a real play, but it really works!”

“I love the curve of the show. We start as very small children and live the entire life of these characters through their letters. It’s an actor’s dream,” she said.

Linden says when he first did Love Letters with Eden, it was a “revelation.”

“People know her mostly from kind of fluffy material and may not consider her a dramatic actor,” he said. “But the first time we read it, I heard coming at me this troubled human being who was writing me letters. She brought this incredible emotion to her voice. I was amazed.”

Eden and Linden both remember actual love letters that made the biggest impressions on them.

“I remember writing letters to my wife when I was out on the road doing tours early in our marriage,” Linden said. “And I remember the letters I got from her. I don’t know if I’d call them love letters, but there was certainly a lot of love in what we were writing to each other.”

“I do remember a certain letter that I got when I was pretty young — so young I didn’t even know it was a love letter,” Eden recalled. “But then my mother got a hold of it, and she told me it was a love letter. I was just in high school, and he and I were classmates. So it went right over my head, but I remember showing it to my mother and asking her what he was talking about.

“So she looked it over for a few minutes and said to me, ‘Barbara, this is beautiful.’ I guess that was my first love letter!”

The Ridgefield Playhouse is a nonprofit performing arts center located at 80 East Ridge. For tickets ($67.50), contact the box office at 203-438-5795 or ridgefieldplayhouse.org.