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Wynne Brooks with her first husband, Mickey |
Dear Heart: I love you – did you hear me sing last night?
Heart-wrenching wartime story of lovers, loss and letters to be played out on stage
THE unread letters from a wife to her forces sweetheart in the Second World War are finally set to return home and be heard after a 70-year trip around the world.
The play Dear Heart will bring the heart-wrenching correspondences of the late Wynne Brooks back to the source when it opens at Islington’s King’s Head
Theatre next month.
And, in a twist of fate, Wynne’s incredible story will be given voice by her own relatives, the writers and performers of the show.
Wynne’s niece by marriage, the acclaimed Australian playwright Rebecca Davies, stumbled on the letters while she was sorting Wynne’s estate after her death in the 1980s.
Married during the Blitz in 1940, Wynne wrote to her RAF husband Mickey every day while he was fighting.
Mickey died of dysentery in a Japanese prisoner of war camp but, unaware of his death, Wynne continued sending letters for two years.
When the war ended all the letters were returned to her, bundled up in their hundreds on her doorstep. They had never reached him.
Her story could have ended there, bereaved and alone, but for a young soldier called Sid Curtis who had fought alongside Mickey and promised the pilot he would contact his sweetheart if he didn’t make it.
Sid and Wynne fell in love and were married. Up until his death in the 1980s he was a familiar face in Islington, running a gentleman’s outfitters in Pentonville Road.
Agelink Theatre, the company behind the production, are appealing for anyone who might remember Sid or Wynne and the tailor’s shop to share their memories after the show.
Dear Heart stars the playwright’s daughter Jenny – Wynne’s great niece – as Wynne and Jenny’s husband, Stuart Halusz, as the amorous soldiers. “Wynne wasn’t a literary person but she wrote from the heart. She was very spirited – we feel we’ve got her blessing,” said Mr Halusz.
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