She Loves Me Not, She Loves Me!

Claire Kepple. Photo courtesy of The Non-Stop Players.

It was love for each from the first letter, but can the words in that correspondence from the Lonely Hearts Club be trusted? Will Amalia Balash (Claire Kepple, pictured) and Georg Noweck (Henry Morton) stop snarling at each other, discover that they are the letter writers and declare their love for each other just before Valentine’s Day? The Non-Stop Players, a resident company of Actors Cabaret of Eugene, takes you on Amalia’s and Georg’s jagged love story in Budapest, Hungary, in the comedy musical She Loves Me, which has three final performances at ACE. She Loves Me has a rich history, starting with the premiere of a play called The Parfumerie in Hungary in 1937. Hollywood got a hold of it with its variations, first in 1940 with the film The Shop Around the Corner, starring Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan, and most recently with the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It made its debut on Broadway in 1963, and a 2016 Broadway revival is the version of the musical The Non-Stop Players, directed by Karen Olsen, is using for this production.