‘Dear Mrs. Baker’ Proves Heartwarming but Flawed

Answering a newspaper’s letter to the editor from a soldier in Vietnam, playwright Nancy Anne Baker’s mother began an odyssey of charity and discovery that eventually led her to correspond with 50 soldiers over a five-year period.

In “Dear Mrs. Baker,” at the Eclectic Company Theater, Baker has constructed a touching though flawed tribute to both her mother’s generosity and the tragedy of men serving in an unpopular war.

Mrs. Marilyn Baker (a spunky Darcy Shean) is the wife of a former soldier and mother of three girls. Alex Hajdu’s set design surrounds the island of Mrs. Baker’s world of domesticity with the jungles of war where men (well-played by Christopher Delisle, Charles Mitri, Joe Camareno, Seth Walther, Martin George and Brian Pope) drop in from above and spring up from below. As the soldiers grow closer to Mrs. Baker and more disillusioned with the war, director Christine Devereux allows them to wistfully trespass into Mrs. Baker’s home.

While the soldiers’ interaction is relaxed and natural, Devereux’s staging of Mrs. Baker’s meeting with their mothers tends to be stilted.

There are other weak points. Although the play begins with Mrs. Baker reminiscing, “What I remember most [about the Vietnam War] is burnt chocolate chip cookies,” the family seldom intrudes into Mrs. Baker’s life, causing her to be oddly isolated. Baker is a tad too cloying in her praise of her mother. An objective eye could tighten and sharpen this play.

Yet Baker still manages to interest us in the lives of these men and feel the very real need that Mrs. Baker filled. Baker calls her mother a hero, and indeed she is.

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* “Dear Mrs. Baker,” Eclectic Company Theater, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Oct. 24. $15. (818) 508-3003. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.