The Christmas Letter Writing Club: A Review
Four young adult women. Jenn, Katie, Lisa, and Allison. Friends from undergrad. They reunite several years after graduation from UW Madison at a cabin in Wisconsin to start writing Christmas letters about the activities and events of their respective years. Some years are better than others. Watching their children grow up. Navigating the ups and downs of marriage. Sustaining personal losses. Dealing with diagnoses. But through it all, they have their friendship. They enjoy each other's company, and the wine, so very much that they decide to make it an annual tradition. Could a play that runs roughly an hour and forty minutes which is mainly just about four women with close bonds who support each other and get along well really hold audience attention?
Yes. The audiences were rapt.
About ten minutes into The Christmas Letter Writing Club, it was obvious that it was going to be checking off a lot of the boxes that meet the criteria for a Greg O'Neill play.
I literally have the least right to be included in this photo of anyone. I helped Sara study lines on two afternoons, and paid to see it twice as an audience member.
Old friends get together after college. Check. Time lapse depicting the passage of years. Check. Destination reunions in a cabin in Wisconsin. Check. Writing a Christmas letter to mail out to friends and family to keep them up to speed on the events of the year. Double Check. The plot thickening with personal stories with the subsequent years. Double Check.
I thought of Steel Magnolias, The Dixie Swim Club, and On Golden Pond while watching this play, directed by Madison Duling, with a script by Tom Akers, who hails from Cambridge, Illinois. Tom deserves some credit here. It's not really easy for men to write really good, fleshed out, well-developed roles for women. And to do so in their voice. He does an excellent job of letting them sound representative of actual women. Watching the play was not so much like a performance as it was dropping in on the lives of actual women. That's a compliment. I paid all the more attention to this play because it was that naturalistic. It wasn't like watching people disappear into a character. It was watching actors find the characters, settle in, and make themselves very much at home in said character. It was very enjoyable.
The fact that the play basically has women supporting women and getting along with each other had me sitting up and take notice. The time past quickly the two times I came to see the show.
The first character we meet is Michael. Played by Zach Zelnio, Michael is setting up the story of the cabin, owned by his family, that his wife Jenn uses to meet with her friends annually. Though Zach is very young, with the right jacket, glasses, and cap, he passes easily for his mid-forties. From the present day, he relates the story of meeting Jenn at a Wisconsin Badgers college football game, and how they fell in love on the spot.
As he speaks, Jenn (Sara Laufer), Katie (Mara Earp), Allison (Jaclyn Marta), and Lisa (Elle Winchester) enter upstage behind him. The set resembles the inside of the cabin. We know that Jenn and Michael have two children, Olivia and Owen. We know that Katie is married to Paul, and they have Nick. Katie reveals that she and her husband started practicing the sacrament a little early, and that she was a little bit pregnant already by the time of their wedding. It's a big shock to her friends. This is a big reveal to them three years after the fact. We know that Lisa is married to Mitch, and they have a son, Evan. Lisa had mixed feelings about leaving her career to take care of Evan. And a strain on her marriage to Mitch is that he has been at complete liberty to follow his dreams and tour with his band. And he has happily struck up a friendship with a friend of a bandmate's wife. Lisa has deep-seated abandonment issues, but not without cause. Finally, there's Allison, who is married to Brad, and has two boys. One of the boys will grow up and join the marines.
Our story starts in 1996. There was no Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram in 1996. We didn't even have Livejournal back then. In '96, we had AOL Instant Message and e-mail. So the writing of Christmas letters was still very common. Think back to the mid '90's. Getting a Christmas card with a Christmas letter was basically the equivalent of visiting somebody's Facebook wall. You got all the updates. And you'd post a response by calling them to thank them. Or you'd respond in kind with a Christmas letter, thereby posting on your own wall.
I recall writing Christmas cards with long notes from the late '90's through 2006. I would send them out at the mail room at Augustana College. The closer I got to my friends, the more personal the messages became. For a stretch from '07 to about 2019, I only sent out a select few cards a year. (Again, all the social media began to compensate.) But as it happens, I have taken to writing a Christmas letter every year since 2020. Open up a Microsoft Word file. Insert a picture or two. Type about the entire year like it's one extended blog post printed out on paper. Sometimes I send it as an attachment via e-mail. But for a few people, I print out a copy. 2020 was an interesting one.
But back to The Christmas Letter Writing Club.
In '96, Katie is a lush, Lisa is itching to get back into the work world, and Jenn and Allison are the stable backbones.
Flash forward to 2003, and they are in their thirties. Lisa is in the middle of a messy divorce. She has the chance encounter with Joe (Noah Stivers, not Nathan Lundberg, was going off of a Facebook pic with tags instead of the show's program in draft #1, lesson learned), the superintendent of the property.
She has just been served the divorce papers from her soon-to-be-ex-husband's attorney. She gets her answer from Mitch that she had been waiting for. She headed into October of 2003 with a great big "I don't know" from the love of her life. He left her hanging with a non-answer when she asked if they could still have a relationship. And then she caught him with someone new. The break up was made official with the divorce papers. No adequate closure.
I think what I am meaning to say is that I was on board with Lisa throwing herself at a one night stand with Joe the building superintendent.
This sets up an interesting debate. Allison doesn't want to see Lisa get doubly hurt. She has only just broken up with Mitch. So Allison suggests that she take some time. She's got a point. What if Lisa really liked Joe? Uproot Evan and move to Wisconsin? Find new work? I instantly thought of a random documentary I watched on Ronald Reagan on a roadtrip to Cleveland, Ohio several years back. After he divorced his first wife, he went on a string of dates that became one night stands. The future President of the United States woke up in bed one morning with a woman whose name he didn't know. This would have been in the 1950's. Allison doesn't want the same thing to happen to Lisa. She doesn't want to see her friend going off the deep end.
On the other hand, I trust Joe. So I kind of wanted to cast a vote to say "go for it, Lisa."
What I was afraid of happening at this point in The Christmas Letter Writing Club was a big speech and intervention, where everyone tried to stop Lisa from sewing her wild oats. How very refreshing it was at this point in the narrative to see the women listen to each other and lend each other a pulpit for their respective voices. Every actress got a good, big scene where they got to discuss their major life problems.
There are some more events that happen in the second half that you're going to have to buy a ticket to the show to find out, as our story catches up to near-present day. But it makes a case for the enduring, rock-solid, indomitable friendship of women. There are some bruised egos. There are some inferiority complexes. There are scenes when one of the character can't quite see the forest for the trees, and doesn't realize how good she has it with her life. That established, it is dealt with. The other girls manage to give her some insight, some perspective.
One line sticks out. Sara as Jenn points out that "we are closer to each other than our own families." The weekend at the cabin, the lodge, is their safehaven. It's their safe place. It is where the girls can be truly unvarnished. They may be losing their heads at home, because they have to keep it together for their husbands and children. Heavily depended upon by everyone in their orbit. At the lodge, though, they get their free therapy session for the year. They have friends with whom they can confide anything. They can be their most genuine selves. No judgment. Advice? Aplenty. Course correction? Here and there. Life coaching? At times. But no judgment.
On that note, it is remarkable just how organic the friendship was, as exhibited, between the actors in character. You get the sense they are true friends off stage and out of character. None of it feels phony. It speaks to the skills of these performers that they can find that balance. They keep their interaction intimate, a little on the quiet side, and sincere. You are not watching people pretend to be friends.
I'm Sara Laufer's real-life husband, and I've seen her onstage many times in the past fourteen years, since we met putting on Promises, Promises at that very stage. This is my favorite role she has ever played. It goes ahead of The Christmas Express. Everyone props each other up. I think of two songs from the musical Rent. "Seasons of Love" and "I'll Cover You." You see these women navigate uncertain waters over many seasons, many years. And there's love between them. And they do cover each other through thick and thin.
There are tears. I welled up like I do at the end of E.T. and To Kill a Mockingbird on Sunday at the matinee. There are abundant laughs as well, though. Big laughs.
I can't recommend this show highly enough. Gather your closest friends together and rush out to get a ticket to see The Christmas Letter Writing Club while you have a chance. Three more chances actually.
https://playcrafters.com/
The show runs at 7:30 pm on Friday and Saturday evening, plus 3:00 pm on Sunday afternoon.
Here's the phone number:
309-762-0330.
Yes. The audiences were rapt.
About ten minutes into The Christmas Letter Writing Club, it was obvious that it was going to be checking off a lot of the boxes that meet the criteria for a Greg O'Neill play.
I literally have the least right to be included in this photo of anyone. I helped Sara study lines on two afternoons, and paid to see it twice as an audience member.
Old friends get together after college. Check. Time lapse depicting the passage of years. Check. Destination reunions in a cabin in Wisconsin. Check. Writing a Christmas letter to mail out to friends and family to keep them up to speed on the events of the year. Double Check. The plot thickening with personal stories with the subsequent years. Double Check.
I thought of Steel Magnolias, The Dixie Swim Club, and On Golden Pond while watching this play, directed by Madison Duling, with a script by Tom Akers, who hails from Cambridge, Illinois. Tom deserves some credit here. It's not really easy for men to write really good, fleshed out, well-developed roles for women. And to do so in their voice. He does an excellent job of letting them sound representative of actual women. Watching the play was not so much like a performance as it was dropping in on the lives of actual women. That's a compliment. I paid all the more attention to this play because it was that naturalistic. It wasn't like watching people disappear into a character. It was watching actors find the characters, settle in, and make themselves very much at home in said character. It was very enjoyable.
The fact that the play basically has women supporting women and getting along with each other had me sitting up and take notice. The time past quickly the two times I came to see the show.
The first character we meet is Michael. Played by Zach Zelnio, Michael is setting up the story of the cabin, owned by his family, that his wife Jenn uses to meet with her friends annually. Though Zach is very young, with the right jacket, glasses, and cap, he passes easily for his mid-forties. From the present day, he relates the story of meeting Jenn at a Wisconsin Badgers college football game, and how they fell in love on the spot.
As he speaks, Jenn (Sara Laufer), Katie (Mara Earp), Allison (Jaclyn Marta), and Lisa (Elle Winchester) enter upstage behind him. The set resembles the inside of the cabin. We know that Jenn and Michael have two children, Olivia and Owen. We know that Katie is married to Paul, and they have Nick. Katie reveals that she and her husband started practicing the sacrament a little early, and that she was a little bit pregnant already by the time of their wedding. It's a big shock to her friends. This is a big reveal to them three years after the fact. We know that Lisa is married to Mitch, and they have a son, Evan. Lisa had mixed feelings about leaving her career to take care of Evan. And a strain on her marriage to Mitch is that he has been at complete liberty to follow his dreams and tour with his band. And he has happily struck up a friendship with a friend of a bandmate's wife. Lisa has deep-seated abandonment issues, but not without cause. Finally, there's Allison, who is married to Brad, and has two boys. One of the boys will grow up and join the marines.
Our story starts in 1996. There was no Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram in 1996. We didn't even have Livejournal back then. In '96, we had AOL Instant Message and e-mail. So the writing of Christmas letters was still very common. Think back to the mid '90's. Getting a Christmas card with a Christmas letter was basically the equivalent of visiting somebody's Facebook wall. You got all the updates. And you'd post a response by calling them to thank them. Or you'd respond in kind with a Christmas letter, thereby posting on your own wall.
I recall writing Christmas cards with long notes from the late '90's through 2006. I would send them out at the mail room at Augustana College. The closer I got to my friends, the more personal the messages became. For a stretch from '07 to about 2019, I only sent out a select few cards a year. (Again, all the social media began to compensate.) But as it happens, I have taken to writing a Christmas letter every year since 2020. Open up a Microsoft Word file. Insert a picture or two. Type about the entire year like it's one extended blog post printed out on paper. Sometimes I send it as an attachment via e-mail. But for a few people, I print out a copy. 2020 was an interesting one.
But back to The Christmas Letter Writing Club.
In '96, Katie is a lush, Lisa is itching to get back into the work world, and Jenn and Allison are the stable backbones.
Flash forward to 2003, and they are in their thirties. Lisa is in the middle of a messy divorce. She has the chance encounter with Joe (Noah Stivers, not Nathan Lundberg, was going off of a Facebook pic with tags instead of the show's program in draft #1, lesson learned), the superintendent of the property.
She has just been served the divorce papers from her soon-to-be-ex-husband's attorney. She gets her answer from Mitch that she had been waiting for. She headed into October of 2003 with a great big "I don't know" from the love of her life. He left her hanging with a non-answer when she asked if they could still have a relationship. And then she caught him with someone new. The break up was made official with the divorce papers. No adequate closure.
I think what I am meaning to say is that I was on board with Lisa throwing herself at a one night stand with Joe the building superintendent.
This sets up an interesting debate. Allison doesn't want to see Lisa get doubly hurt. She has only just broken up with Mitch. So Allison suggests that she take some time. She's got a point. What if Lisa really liked Joe? Uproot Evan and move to Wisconsin? Find new work? I instantly thought of a random documentary I watched on Ronald Reagan on a roadtrip to Cleveland, Ohio several years back. After he divorced his first wife, he went on a string of dates that became one night stands. The future President of the United States woke up in bed one morning with a woman whose name he didn't know. This would have been in the 1950's. Allison doesn't want the same thing to happen to Lisa. She doesn't want to see her friend going off the deep end.
On the other hand, I trust Joe. So I kind of wanted to cast a vote to say "go for it, Lisa."
What I was afraid of happening at this point in The Christmas Letter Writing Club was a big speech and intervention, where everyone tried to stop Lisa from sewing her wild oats. How very refreshing it was at this point in the narrative to see the women listen to each other and lend each other a pulpit for their respective voices. Every actress got a good, big scene where they got to discuss their major life problems.
There are some more events that happen in the second half that you're going to have to buy a ticket to the show to find out, as our story catches up to near-present day. But it makes a case for the enduring, rock-solid, indomitable friendship of women. There are some bruised egos. There are some inferiority complexes. There are scenes when one of the character can't quite see the forest for the trees, and doesn't realize how good she has it with her life. That established, it is dealt with. The other girls manage to give her some insight, some perspective.
One line sticks out. Sara as Jenn points out that "we are closer to each other than our own families." The weekend at the cabin, the lodge, is their safehaven. It's their safe place. It is where the girls can be truly unvarnished. They may be losing their heads at home, because they have to keep it together for their husbands and children. Heavily depended upon by everyone in their orbit. At the lodge, though, they get their free therapy session for the year. They have friends with whom they can confide anything. They can be their most genuine selves. No judgment. Advice? Aplenty. Course correction? Here and there. Life coaching? At times. But no judgment.
On that note, it is remarkable just how organic the friendship was, as exhibited, between the actors in character. You get the sense they are true friends off stage and out of character. None of it feels phony. It speaks to the skills of these performers that they can find that balance. They keep their interaction intimate, a little on the quiet side, and sincere. You are not watching people pretend to be friends.
I'm Sara Laufer's real-life husband, and I've seen her onstage many times in the past fourteen years, since we met putting on Promises, Promises at that very stage. This is my favorite role she has ever played. It goes ahead of The Christmas Express. Everyone props each other up. I think of two songs from the musical Rent. "Seasons of Love" and "I'll Cover You." You see these women navigate uncertain waters over many seasons, many years. And there's love between them. And they do cover each other through thick and thin.
There are tears. I welled up like I do at the end of E.T. and To Kill a Mockingbird on Sunday at the matinee. There are abundant laughs as well, though. Big laughs.
I can't recommend this show highly enough. Gather your closest friends together and rush out to get a ticket to see The Christmas Letter Writing Club while you have a chance. Three more chances actually.
https://playcrafters.com/
The show runs at 7:30 pm on Friday and Saturday evening, plus 3:00 pm on Sunday afternoon.
Here's the phone number:
309-762-0330.