Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Club life
The three stars of Manoa Valley
By Stephanie Kendrick
Theatre's 'Cemetery Club' find humor
and strength in their characters
and in each other
Assistant Features Editor
Star-BulletinSYLVIA HORMANN-ALPER KNOWS what it's like to face the possibility of losing a mate.
Her husband, Don Alper, has been battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for the past year. While he has had a successful fight against the immune system cancer, he is not out of the woods yet.
"I've been through the illness. I hope that he's going to be around so I won't have to go to the graveyard," says Alper.
A touch of gallows humor and 48 years of acting experience have made it possible for Alper to play Lucille Rudin, widow of Harry Rudin, in Manoa Valley Theatre's "The Cemetery Club."
The play explores the friendship of three Jewish widows who meet once a month to have tea and visit their husband's graves.
The Star-Bulletin met up with the three actresses who star in the show at Tea at 1024 on Nuuanu Avenue. (See a review of the tea room at right.)
Alper, who began her acting career at the age of 12 in a Christmas pageant on the roof of the old Sears store, said her husband has always supported her desire to act and this play has been no exception. "We met in the theater. I cast him in a play," she says. "I think it's been very good for me to go out and think about something else."
Sandy Ritz, who plays Doris Silverman, knows what she means.
"Theater is therapy," says Ritz, who is a doctor of public health and a humor consultant.
ON STAGE
The Cemetery Club
"We've had a lot of laughs just sitting around reading the play," says Alper.
The bond the actresses have formed getting ready for this production comes through.
Director Vanita Rae Smith has had them dancing together, as the characters do in one scene of the play, in order to forge that bond, says Jo Pruden, who plays Ida Shapiro and has appeared in more than 65 plays during 32 years in Hawaii.
Pruden and Alper tease Ritz about her lack of acting experience, only about 15 years in local theater, and her youth; she's the only cast member under 60.
"We referred to her as the baby sometimes," says Alper.
"They changed my diapers last night," says Ritz.
While Ritz has shared the stage with Pruden in past productions, Pruden and Alper have never been in the same play. In fact, they often find themselves trying out for the same roles.
"We're competitors," says Pruden.
"We've never scratched each others eyes out or anything," adds Alper.
Both were pleased to finally be working together.
The play and its characters bob in an out of their conversation as the three women talk about the roles they are playing and what the play has meant to them.
Pruden describes her character as the peacemaker. She's willing to get on with her life and is open to new relationships. Acting in the play has made her particularly grateful for her husband and the good fortune of having someone to hold you close. "I'm not going to spend my life feeling guilty for wanting to be touched and held," she quotes Ida.
Alper's character is on the prowl to punish her late husband for cheating on her. "My character is, I guess, the most flamboyant of the three," says Alper. "I've had it up to here with the grave and the cemetery," she says as Lucille.
Ritz's character has been widowed the longest, but remains the most absorbed in her relationship with her husband. "I have a great relationship with my husband, it's just that he's dead," says Ritz as Doris.
Doris is uptight, though she doesn't know it, says Ritz. "On an STS (sphincter tension scale) of 1-10 she's a 13," she says. "She's Y2K ready all the time."
While Ritz was initially upset about being cast as Doris, who she saw as the least sympathetic of the three main characters, she has grown to appreciate what she stands for.
The generation portrayed in the play knew something about commitment, says Ritz.
"Except for Selma." says Alper, laughing.
"Selma's husbands all died," says Pruden.
"All of them?" asks Alper.
"I think so," says Ritz.
Selma is a character in the play, though she never appears on stage, who seems to have a pattern of serial widowhood. Her most recent wedding provides the backdrop for the play's climax.
The emphasis on the importance of friendship and the strength of women are two features of the story the actresses appreciate most.
"I come from generations of strong women survivors. All of us do," says Ritz, who is Jewish. "I get saddened by the negative images of the nagging annoying Jewish mother."
"Even though they scrap and they fight and they insult each other, they would all be there in a second to help each other," says Pruden of their characters.
Richard Pellet as Sam Katz (a widower and disruptive force in the lives of the three friends) and Cecilia Fordham as Mildred (the other woman, but not really) round out the cast of characters in "The Cemetery Club."
Click for online
calendars and events.
