‘Tuesdays With Morrie’ touches heartstrings and funny bone

Tom Titus

A Detroit sportswriter’s memoir of weekly visits to his dying former

college professor in Massachusetts evolved into a bestselling book

and an Emmy award-winning television drama. Now it’s a stage play,

making an impressive West Coast premiere at the Laguna Playhouse.

“Tuesdays With Morrie” recounts author Mitch Albom’s reconnection

with a favorite Brandeis University professor some 15 years after his

graduation, during which Albom evolved into a highly honored

sportswriter and columnist with the Detroit Free Press. Each Tuesday,

he would fly to Boston and spend a few hours with the professor,

Morris Schwartz, to further his education in the meaning of life,

love and friendship.

Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher collaborated with Albom to bring this

highly entertaining and deeply touching true story to the stage, and

the Laguna production aims straight for the heart. Director Richard

Stein and his superior two-character cast give this richly flavored

account the style and texture required for live performance.

While both actors enrich their real-life characters, it is Jack

Axelrod in the title role who sweeps the audience up with a dancer’s

flourish. It’s his lightness on his feet that’s displayed as his

first character trait when the play opens -- and one that remains

riveted in playgoers’ minds at the final fadeout.

Axelrod -- a short, bald, wizened old man whose stage presence

suggests extreme frailty -- exhibits a barbed wit which refuses to

surrender to the terminal ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) that is

diminishing the character himself.

That he will be gone by the play’s end is a foregone conclusion,

but while he’s still breathing, Axelrod’s Morrie is an intellectual

force to be reckoned with, much like the principal character in

Margaret Edson’s “Wit.”

Playing second banana in this twosome is not an enviable task --

the old man is virtually assured of the lion’s share of the laugh

lines, and Axelrod tweaks them like the seasoned professional he is.

Yet Daniel Nathan Spector endows the role of Mitch with the varied

character shadings necessary to balance the play. Spector both

narrates and performs the part with an agreeable twinge of today’s

upwardly mobile, ambitious type occasionally butting heads with the

more relaxed, philosophical attitude of yesterday. His skill behind

the piano keyboard also enriches the play considerably.

As the end draws nearer, Mitch has become more and more dependent

on his Tuesday visits with Morrie, and Spector deepens this attitude

with a heart-wrenching breakdown sequence. It is, we are given to

understand, akin to losing a father, in Mitch’s case for the second

time.

Morrie is no insular hermit. He has a wife, several children and a

nurse -- all unseen -- while Mitch has a wife who sings

professionally -- heard in a recorded telephone conversation. These

characters add depth to the play itself, even they never physically

appear.

The simple, focused setting by Dwight Richard Odle -- with only a

tree as permanent stage furnishing and other accoutrements slid on

and off stage as required -- combines with Tom Ruzika’s lighting

effects and David Edwards’ sound design to create a most intimate

experience.

“Tuesdays With Morrie” made its mark on television with the

now-departed Jack Lemmon in the title role. With Axelrod and Spector

enriching their true-life characters, the stage version also becomes

a captivating, highly personal experience.

* TOM TITUS reviews local theater for the Coastline Pilot.