Emotionally Rewarding Event, ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’

Dunwoody’s Stage Door Theatre, which opened “Tuesdays With Morrie” for a three-week run Sept. 29 is a production that comes with built-in audience appeal. The book upon which the play is based, was first published over 25 years ago and is said to be among the bestselling memoirs of all time.

The slim volume chronicles the relationship between its two Jewish main characters, Brandeis University sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, who’s dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and his former student, Mitch Albom, who is a successful, but restless sportswriter who revisits him 16 years after his graduation.

Albom undertook the project, originally, just to help pay for Schwartz’s medical expenses, but its success has given his story a life of its own. It has sold more than 18 million copies and has been translated into 48 languages. The book continues to be an inspiring tool for countless rabbis, therapists, and medical care givers who are often called upon to ease the pain of loss. Its universal appeal was heightened with a made-for-television movie produced by Oprah Winfrey in 1999. The film won Emmys for its two stars, Hank Azaria and Hollywood icon, Jack Lemmon, who in his last major role, played the dying Schwartz, two years before his own passing.

Albom helped adapt the book with Jeffrey Hatcher for an Off-Broadway production in 2002 that has become a staple for regional and community theaters ever since. The latest production in the intimate Stage Door Theatre puts its audience just a few feet from the actors. It is a perfect venue for the emotional drama, which Albom subtitled for his book, “an old man, a young man and life’s greatest lesson.”

“Tuesdays With Morrie” features John Romanski, left, as writer Mitch Albom, and Dan Reichard as his former professor, Morrie Schwartz.

Under the capable hands of director Justin Ball, who has brought new energy to the 50-year-old Stage Door Theatre, the evening is a compelling take on the power of friendship and the important gifts we can gain from those who are facing their final hours. For Ball, part of the attraction of the play is that its message has resonated so powerfully in the past.

“This is an uplifting play and one that exposes the human character,” Ball says. “And ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ obviously has a lot of name recognition and also really pulls at the heartstrings in a lovely way. That’s sort of what drew me to it.”

Morrie’s guiding philosophy, which he framed during the decline of his health during his last few months, has been a particularly timely one during the recent days of reflection during this fall’s Jewish holidays. As he put it in Albom’s book, “You have to find what’s good and beautiful in your life as it is now. Looking back makes you competitive. And age is not a competitive issue.”

For Ball the directing assignment had personal meaning.

“I think what is most beautiful is that we really see how human Morrie Schwartz is. It’s really easy to sort of see him in these snippets of brilliant quotes. But I think what’s so impressive is the physical struggle and the frustration that comes out at moments in this production. And its heartbreaking moments where the body is giving up before the mind. But he continues to choose optimism in each of those moments, and that is certainly something that I choose I hope to live my life by. And, you know, I’m not at an age where I have declining parents. And so, this is certainly a piece that I can relate to as well.”

The two performers in the play are Dan Reichard as Morrie, and John Romanski, as Albom, the writer who records Schwartz’s final thoughts in a series of weekly visits. Both have previously worked with Ball in Dunwoody and are personal friends. They perform well together in the play, which has, as its essential ingredient, the chemistry that develops between the two men who are separated by nearly a half-century of life experience.

According to Ball, audiences have frequently stayed after the performance, to introduce themselves to the actors and discuss the emotional impact that the play zdelivers.

As Albom writes in the final words of his best seller about the professor and his mature student, “The teaching goes on.”