Photo Credit: Laura Heise
Tuesdays With Morrie is most well known as a best-selling book-turned-movie based on sports journalist Mitch Albom’s visits with his favorite college professor, Morrie Schwartz. The professor is wasting away from ALS; Mitch has been living the fast-track life for 16 years since graduation, losing himself in the pursuit of career and fame. The regular visits became a blueprint for Albom and millions of others for how to rediscover the meaning of life and celebrate it in the midst of facing death. Albom, along with veteran playwright Jeff Hatcher, adapted the book into a play featuring the two main characters.
Under the steady direction of Elaine Wyler, Acacia Theatre Company has mounted a moving production featuring two very talented actors, Drew Brhel and David Sapiro. When Albom learns Schwartz is dying (via a TV interview), he visits the professor thinking he’s paid his respects, once and for all. But the more Morrie speaks, the more sense he makes about what truly matters in life and how to deal with what life deals us. Morrie’s lines are often inspirational and amazingly upbeat considering the effects of the disease. “The body kills itself,” he explains to his former pupil; "like a third party, it begins to observe its own decay.”
Albom, for his part, is the typical cellphone-addicted workaholic. So the two very different men become counterpoints and counterbalances for each other as Mitch helps to move Morrie as the disease progresses. No spoiler alerts here; Morrie dies. It’s just when, and, of course, how Mitch and the audience will respond.
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With two such finely tuned actors as Brhel (Morrie) and Sapiro (Mitch), Tuesdays With Morrie seamlessly weaves together the close bond between the teacher and his former student in a natural, realistic way. The intimate feel of the play is further enhanced by Acacia’s move to the 100-seat Norvell Commons, where its thrust-like stage gives the audience an up-close-and-personal feel as if sitting with two friends in the family room.
It’s fair to say that there were plenty of tears and sniffling based on these top-notch performances, and yet there was nothing overly sentimental or maudlin, a credit to the writers and director. As Morrie points out toward the end of his life, “The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how live.” This poignant production helps us all to better understand what that means and to practice it while we can.
Through Nov. 24 at St. Christopher’s Church Norvell Commons, 7845 N. River Road, River Hills.
