The Clayton Community Theatre’s The Cemetery Club is probably the third community theatre production of the play that I have seen. I’m not complaining. It’s an amusing script, and it has great roles for three actors “of a certain age,” plus a fourth, and a man to join the ladies. I expect to see it again.

At Clayton, the three women are played by Jan Meyer, Gabi Maul, and Helene Meyer. Aaron Mermelstein plays the man, Tina Renard is the extra woman. That is a fine cast.

The Club is composed of three widows living in Queens, New York, who get together once a month to visit the graves of their late husbands, tidy up the plot and converse with the deceased. When one of them begins to develop a serious relationship with a widower who also visits the cemetery, the other two take steps to break up this threat to the club. 

The play’s jokes about husbands and wives are all the old familiar jokes about husbands and wives, but they’re well put together by playwright Ivan Menchell and well integrated into his script that only occasionally is a little forced. 

Fortunately, the Clayton Community Theatre has three accomplished comediennes playing the widows, and a director, Sam Hack who keeps the pace moving and changing. 

Gabi Maul plays Ida, whose attempt to move on with a new relationship threatens the others. Jan Meyer, in glorious fur coat, is Lucille, ever complaining about her husband’s unfaithfulness and bragging about her own active romantic liaisons now. And Helene Meyer plays Doris, the one who clings most strongly to her late husband. All three characters are Jewish, and all three actors handle the playwright’s Queens speech patterns convincingly. 

Aaron Mermelstein is sweet, subdued, and funny as Sam the Butcher, the widower who shares Ida’s desire to live the remainder of their lives in the future, not the past. Tina Renard has an amusing turn as an interloper in the Club, embarrassing Sam.

Rob Corbett designed Ida’s attractive living room, with lighting by Nathan Schroeder. Jean Heckmann found the humor in her costume designs.    Jim Geiler constructed the very impressive arched entrance to the cemetery. Lilian Claire Dodenhoff is the Stage Manager and Niccole Hilliard the Producer. 

When done as well as Clayton does it, The Cemetery Club can still be amusing.

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by John Lamb
From the left, Helene Meyer as Doris, Gabi Maul as Ida, Aaron Mermelstein as Sam, and Jan Meyer as Lucille in The Cemetery Club.