Theater Review: “Cemetery Club” at Good Company Players anchored by accomplished leading performances

by Donald Munro

Time is the most precious commodity in “The Cemetery Club.” We meet three widows who have lost their husbands, and one of the new routines in their long friendship is that they take a monthly trip together to visit the headstones of their deceased male spouses. (Ah, the gender-driven arbitrariness of the actuarial tables.) The unspoken assumption, of course, is that these women are headed for the same place as their male partners – perhaps sooner than later.

The title is best known for the 1993 film, starring Olympia Dukakis and Diane Ladd, and not for the short-lived 1990 Broadway play, which garnered decent notices for the actors involved, but was mostly dismissed by critics for having a somewhat predictable, sitcom-leaning script.

Which is why the Good Company Players production, playing through Oct. 18 at the 2nd Space Theatre, was a pleasant surprise for me. Director Kristin Lyn Crase resists the broad, easy laughs and and instead manages to showcase the sweet, often smart, sentimentality of the writing. The leading performances are accomplished. 

There is the stalwart Ida (Elizabeth Fiester), the sweetest and most practical one of the bunch, who is slowly itching for a change, perhaps even a new relationship. Doris (Karan Johnson) is firmly and proudly wedded to the status quo – staying faithful to the memory of her dead husband. Lucille (Valerie Munoz) is the flirty  playgirl of the three, reveling in her newfound romantic freedom and bragging about the joys of dating around.

Each of these performances on their own resonate. Each of the women offer sharp characterizations: Johnson’s tentative cast to her voice, the tilt of her chin, the hesitancy of her gaze. Fiester’s bustling busyness. Munoz’s angled, coy defense mechanisms.

But it’s the sum of the parts – the chemistry that these characters infuse into their moments together – that feels greater than any one individual. (Noel Adams, as an eligible widower and dominant male presence in the play, fits nicely into this quartet with his own measured, appealing performance.)

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The plot isn’t exactly predictable, but it does hum along in a movie-of-the-week comfortability. Yet it’s a pleasing experience, if only to spend time in the company of such accomplished acting.

And there is something deeper here.

Back to the idea of time. It isn’t guaranteed for anyone, of course. At one point we learn that an offstage character died at age 53. Perhaps it was just me projecting my own mortality, but I swear that a sliver of dread – mixed with elation – sliced through the audience when that offhand revelation was made. (Dread because the line reminds us of borrowed time; elation because many of us looked decidedly older than 53, which means we all shared in common a better fortune than the deceased character.) This tussle with time is, to me, what makes the play more interesting than I’d expect. Each of the women has a different take on how best to use the time she has left, and this divergence of viewpoint drives the gentle conflict between them.

It’s a reminder that we’re all headed to the same place. Perhaps the lesson is that the friends you make along the way make all the difference.

“The Cemetery Club” continues at the 2nd Space Theatre through October 18. 

Bonus read: Check out this companion piece by Heather Parish about “The Cemetery Club” and lifelong friendship. 

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