If my complete delight and absorption in the lives and times of those three gutsy women and one man who light up Bunbury Theater's production of Ivan Menchell's The Cemetery Club mark me as a soft hearted old codger, so be it. No apologies! Director Juergen K. Tossmann, Bunbury's producing/artistic director, has assembled a dream cast for this touching and humorous look at three middle-aged Jewish widows from Forest Hills in Queens, New York, who once a month go to the graves of their husbands to talk to them and kibitz. These woman all have mouths on them, and their verbal ping-pong is hilarious. But their affection for each other is palpable, despite, or maybe because of, their different personalities.
Lucille (Liz Vissing) is the glamorous one, always on the lookout for a man. Doris (Jackie Carrico) is the tough-minded, no-nonsense type who tells Lucille, "if you want to pick up men, go to another grave." Ida (Rita Hight) is the wide-eyed dreamer who blossoms when widower Sam (Herman "Hy" Stein), a sad-eyed butcher who comforts her with chicken livers, begins to pay court. When Sam invites another woman, Mildred (Sharon Cardwell, in a cameo role) to go with the group to their much-married friend Selma's latest wedding (Ida, Lucille, and Doris, in identical dresses, are to be bridesmaids), Ida's world comes to a crashing halt. Post-wedding drinks the three women consume after returning to Ida's house bring on tipsy revelations and reflections. An unforeseen death, drawing gasps from the audience, is thrown into the mix. The play ends as it began: in the cemetery, but with new beginnings awaiting those who are left.
Bunbury's radiant treatment of this charming work made me wonder about the 1993 film version, which I never saw. Menchell did the screenplay as well but opened it up to create 31 characters instead of the five in his play. Ellen Burstyn (now named Esther instead of Ida), Olympia Dukakis as Doris, and Diane Ladd as Lucille led a cast that had Lainie Kazan as the overly married Selma, the offstage butt of so many jokes in the play. ("I like Selma's weddings, says Sam. "Selma's weddings are like reunions.") It's hard to see how an inflated cast of characters could ever improve on the miniature perfection that is Bunbury's The Cemetery Club.
