‘The Cemetery Club’ Continues at South Park Theater; 12 Peers Theater ‘Building the Wall’ (Thurs., 6/7/18)

1) Many locals remember The Cemetery Club as a 1993 movie filmed in Pittsburgh. However the movie was based on a stage play, and South Park Theatre is performing this comic drama in its original form. The story: Three newly widowed women, all of advanced age, strike up an informal “club” around visits to their late husbands’ graves. Comedy and pathos ensue when it turns out the women have quite different approaches to widowhood. One is devoted to the memory of her dear departed, another to snagging a new man—and the third, while hardly trying, actually snags one. The Cemetery Club is by playwright and screenwriter Ivan Menchell. In recent years he wrote the books for a couple of dark musicals: Bonnie & Clyde, based on the careers of those criminals, and Death Note: The Musical, adapted from the Japanese manga-and-anime series about a student who finds a magical notebook with the power to kill anyone whose name is written in it. There’s no true crime or supernatural terror in The Cemetery Club—just classic New York-style Jewish humor—but audiences over the decades have found it amusing and endearing. 7:30 p.m. Performances through June 9. Brownsville Rd. at Corrigan Dr., South Park Township. (MV)

2) Some books are written and produced rapidly in response to current events; here is a play that fits the description. Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall premiered in Los Angeles in March 2017, just two months after the inauguration of Donald Trump. The play is a dystopian drama set in the near future. Trump has been impeached—but not before he reacted to a terrorist attack by massively escalating his anti-immigrant agenda. Immigrants already in the country were rounded up, herded into camps, tortured, and executed. All this was done by U.S. citizens complying with orders, of course, and the play is in the form of a prison interview with a man who carried out such atrocities. 8 p.m. Continues through June 10. 12 Peers Theater presents Building the Wall in the Richard E. Rauh Studio Theatre. Level B, Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland.(MV)

3) Our battlin’ Bucs take on the Los Angeles Dodgers today in a 12:35 p.m. game. The Pirates next play the Cubs in Chicago tomorrow. PNC Park, 115 Federal St., North Shore.

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