PEN PALS
by Michael Griffo
Directed by Suzanne Barabas
New celebrity cast every two weeks
Official Website (including cast schedule)
DR2 Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
No review of Pen Pals, in its current run, can be absolutely comprehensive because, like The Vagina Monologues, Love Letters, Trumbo, Love-Loss-and-What-I-Wore, to name a few prominent ones, it’s what I call a “read down” play. The actors have scripts readily available, on music stands, at a desk, etc. To some degree, the iteration of Pen Pals currently at the DR2 Theatre is a bit more elaborate than most, presented on a context-defining set; two partially articulated opposite rooms with writing desks, the character of which reflect the characters seated behind them.
In this two-hander by Michael Griffo, those characters are Margaret from Sheffield, England and Bernadette from Newark, New Jersey. In the early mid-50s, when they’re both young girls, they become pen pals through a school program (as happened commonly then). They affectionately dub each other Mags and Bernie, and thus begins a best-friendship that spans five decades.
Neither is larger-than-life; Mags is culturally more sophisticated and becomes sexually more liberated, Bernie is from a blue collar, socially conservative background and hews to those values—most of the time. Their exchanges are about the normal things “unremarkable” women discuss: boys, first kisses, jobs, husbands, children, health, dreams achieved and thwarted. There’s something about it almost as random as life, though the thread of causality-continuity, and the friends maturing in parallel, is how it hangs together. This should be noted too: The small print of the show card handout (you have to download a fuller program) says, “In honor of real life pen pals Jean Griffo”—one assumes the playwright’s mother—“and Sheila Bashforth”—which sounds plenty British—“and for Kori Watkins, breast cancer survivor.” Which explains a lot. Mr. Griffo may not be dramatizing their stories, per se, but clearly their lives and experiences are the inspiration. And thus also explains the authenticity by which it comes by its emotional connection to the audience.
By the time you read this, the cast I saw will have given way to another (they change every two weeks), so the most practical thing to say about Michelle Clunie (Bernie) and Megan Follows (Mags) is how they reflected the direction of Suzanne Barabas. They were both excellent, their commitment was total, both seemed to have huge swaths of the text committed to memory, and their nuanced deliveries, combined with the staging, the design, the mild business and even the propping, created the illusion that Pen Pals is not a read down play, but one in which the characters are, indeed, spontaneously composing letters. I expect that each cast, in its own way, despite the stark differences in characterization as naturally filtered through persona, will have at least that in common.
So whether you select your pairing of choice or just throw a dart at the schedule calendar, it’s likely that you’ll be pleased indeed.