The Cemetery Club

by Douglas M. Stich

First of all, if you have any interest in theatre and you have the opportunity to see this play whether in a large, expensive production or a modest community production; it is definitely worth your while. "The Cemetery Club" written by Ivan Menchell principally revolves around three fifty-something Jewish widows who have each lost their husbands within a few years of one another. The women gather once a month to visit their husbands' gravesites together. The cemetery visits are bookended by conciliatory greetings and farewells which entail updates, gossip, griping, reflection, arguing and other frivolous banter over tea. This is a heartwarming, morosely funny story about the real-life strategies of coping with such universal inevitabilities as aging and death-and for some of us, marriage followed by life as a widow(er). The play employs the use of drama and comedy to waltz the audience through a very authentic examination of real life events. It is both inspiring and cathartic. Keep in mind you needn't be a woman to enjoy this play. As a male watching these characters, I kept interjecting myself into each role, imagining how I would deliver the lines. Given the fact that some adjustments would have to be made to make the characters more realistically masculine, I could easily identify with each of these characters and understand the spirit and personality of each. In fact this play would even work with a mixture of sexes. I kept thinking of Bea Arthur in the role of Ida. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon would have been great in the respective roles of Doris and Lucille who riffed well off of one another. The loss of that special bond between women exclusively may change the dynamic a bit but I think mixed sexes may make for an interesting experiment. Whatever the intended sex, religion or age of each character, all seem to cast themselves effortlessly in our imaginations enabling the audience to effectively relate to the characters and situations even if we have never actually experienced any of them.

I attended a performance at a local playhouse called the Visalia Ice House. Never having been there before, I was pleasantly surprised that the modest building, a refurbished 1920's ice house, is a very adequate accommodation for local productions. In fact it may soon be time for expansion or a new site altogether simply because the building is a bit small. That's a positive though. The building is fine; a nice structure with a good-sized stage and a technical booth located in the rear of the auditorium. Even though the décor is a bit outdated, the main problem is the amount of room in the Visalia Ice House. It was difficult to navigate comfortably up the short, narrow staircase to the box office and through the narrow hallway to the theatre. During intermission a human traffic jam clogged the foyer where complimentary coffee and cookies were served. However, the minor discomfort is a result of the amount of people in attendance due to the theatre company's popularity. The Visalia Community Players boast an impressive 52-year legacy and prove their success with the support of local theatre-goers who are not only entertained by each production they attend but help to support the local theatre community by making sizable donations as members.

Enough about the play and the facility though. As a critic, I definitely had some problems with this particular production. The principle female cast consisting of Marla Alberstein, Leeni Mitchell and Susan Mathews was pretty good as far as community theatre goes. There are a lot of stylistic choices that I would have made differently had I been one of the actors-but I wasn't. To be fair, I would not say that the acting was bad at all. I certainly heard no complaints from the rest of the audience. Still, my personal convictions wouldn't let me get past some of the parts that were overacted and almost Vaudevillian while other dramatic scenes fell by the wayside and lacked the intensity they deserved. As the lone male in the production, Keith Lindersmith who played Sam was hard to ignore. Sam certainly doesn't share as much stage time as the girls but he is an integral part of the story. As such, the audience expects a middle-aged Jewish man who can really shake up a henhouse. Instead, Lindersmith is a rather soft-spoken weenie who has a strangely high-pitched intonation at certain points in his speech. It may have been his attempt at a New York Jewish dialect but unfortunately it sounded more like a lilting Irish accent hiding a thinly-veiled homosexuality. In my opinion Lindersmith just didn't belong and therefore was the wrong choice for the part. The smallest part of the sparse five-person cast was the character of Mildred played by Nancy Holley. Mildred is merely an incidental character, a tool used to cause friction and competition among the girls for the attention of Sam. However, Holley was the most Vaudevillian of them all and although the audience did laugh at her comedic shtick, I felt the part was overplayed and cheesy.

Reprising his role as Director of the 1993 Visalia production of "The Cemetery Club" was Donny Graham. Overall, the play flowed well but I missed the cadence you see in really good productions. This performance had no breathing room. It felt largely like a recitation of lines the way each actor delivered their words in rapid fire succession. This performance could have really taken on a life of its own had the actors taken the appropriate lengths of dramatic pauses when necessary. There was no point when I felt like I was watching events unfold naturally as characters reacted emotionally and thought about what should be said next. Rather, I was always aware I was watching a play and it seemed as though the actors were so ready to fire out their next line, the previous line had barely a chance to escape the last person's lips. It felt as though the actors were afraid if they didn't launch into the next line immediately they would forget their lines and that is poor strategy for affective drama.

One last critique I have to point out is the set. Unfortunately, this is another blunder apparently committed by the hands of Keith Lindersmith who takes a credit as Set Designer. The overall layout is good and even when the scenes are supposed to be in various parts of the cemetery, we are able to buy into the notion that the actors are in the cemetery and not Ida's New York apartment by moving the action a bit downstage and employing simple lighting techniques. The furniture, wall hangings and other knick-knacks around the house are fine. I even recall seeing an understated menorah or some other Jewish artifact which was a nice, subtle touch. The colors, however, were absolutely atrocious. I could not stand the blue walls with the red chair rails and doors. They were true reds and blues-all that was missing from the primary color pallet was yellow. It just felt like looking at a room in a preschool; not the kind of color choices a bourgeois New Yorker would have made.

The bottom line: this is a respectable production of a very good play. Although March 14th was closing night on this particular production of "The Cemetery Club" at the Visalia Ice House, I would recommend checking out future community theatre productions by the Visalia Players. As mentioned previously, if you don't live in the area but are interested in theatre, keep your eyes peeled for productions of "The Cemetery Club" in your local area. This is one you're sure to love.