Pen Pals by Michael Griffo (2025)
Someone I recently met invited me to see this Off Broadway play. I didn't feel particularly strong about the premise of the play, but I decided to go. I'm glad I did. It was a good play, well-written and full of emotion.
The show is a two-women play, told as a series of letters they have written to each other (as "pen pals") across fifty years of friendship. High school pen pals, one living in Newark, NJ, and one living in Sheffield, England, turned into long term close friends, and we see them share with each other the most important moments of their lives.
There were several moments in the play that resonated with me.
- Moments where a friend challenges you.
- You make a decision in life, or experience something, and your friend speaks up about it not being right, or prodding you to do something differently, or to pursue a dream. Sometimes they are right, and you listen, and good things happen. Sometimes they are not right, and you stick to what you know you must do. But the input is so valuable.
- It makes me ask myself - do I have friends in my life who are, or can be, like this for me? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. It makes me wonder, who will be the friends who will stick it out with me for fifty years? I suppose it should also make me wonder - am I being this type of friend, this Challenger, to the people in my life? I think I am, would, or have-been, in the right doses, at the right time, perhaps. It's a good reminder.
- It reminds me of a quote from the movie Good Will Hunting which I saved in Google Keep on December 19, 2019: "Do you have a soulmate? Somebody who challenges you. Someone who opens up things for you, opens your soul." I've always interpreted "soulmate" here as being a friend who challenges you. I can also see it in the context of a relationship as well.
- A break in a friendship.
- Sending letters but not getting a response for a large chunk of time. And handling it gracefully - not harboring ill-will, but instead expressing that you cherish the words and time you shared together in the past. Then eventually resuming the friendship because the person who wasn't responding eventually realized they did not want to stop communicating just because of a particular conflict of values.
- Sadly, at the time of writing this, I am in the middle of the no-response phase of this sort of thing, for a friendship that meant a lot to me. Like the character here (at least before they resumed their friendship), I do not have an explanation for the silence. While I try to handle it gracefully, it can be hard. I feel like a fool to hold onto hope, because there has been no change for quite a while now. And hope only makes me more sad and makes it hard to move on.
- Experiencing hurdles in life with breast cancer or mental illness in a loved one.
- A mother discovering her son is gay, at first being worried that life will be harder for him, but coming to be happy for him.
A couple other random points on my mind:
- The show has a rotating cast. I saw it with Veanne Cox and Melissa Gilbert. Veanne Cox played a character in the 1995 revival of Company, and I watched Company for the first time just the day before seeing Pen Pals (but the 2006 revival of it). So though I didn't see the recording with Veanne Cox, it's still a funny coincidence/connection.
- Of course, since Company is on my mind, the topics of marriage which came up during this play made me briefly think of Company.