Discomfort with serious illness: A dramatic subject if ever there was one. Certainly the person who is ill has their own emotional and intellectual battles. But the constellation of people around the patient – they’re equally interesting to the neutral observer. Pulling away? See it all the time. Anger? Oh, yeah. Frantic demanding of fixing it RIGHT NOW? Uh huh.
And then there’s guilt. Oh, is there guilt, even when there really isn’t anything to feel guilty for. In Tuesdays with Morrie, the current offering at The New Jewish Theatre, Mitch Albom has plenty of coulda-woulda-shoulda. And that’s on top of drive, career success and an enviable life.
Based on Albom’s true story of his relationship with his undergraduate sociology professor Morris Schwartz, told 20 years ago in his book of the same name, the play is a fast 80 minutes of wisdom and struggle. Albom had been very close to Schwartz when he was a student, and promised to stay in touch. But he’s swept up in life, as life is apt to do when you’re in your in your 20’s, and he never contacts Morrie, whom he had addressed as “Coach”, a name we’re never sure began ironically or not. During those years, he watches his favorite uncle die too young.
But Morrie pops up on “Nightline” – yes, he really did; I remember seeing him – as a story of grace and wisdom in the face of his Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Albom telephones him, then comes to visit. His busy life as a sportswriter and television commentator gives him enough income to fly from his home in Detroit to Boston every week. It seems Albom is a workaholic, barely managing enough time for his own wedding. But the Morrie magic is still clearly there, despite Albom’s life in a hyper-macho environment.
Albom is played by Andrew Michael Neiman. It’s been a long time since I read the book, and I’d forgotten just what a wretched person he was by his own admission, but Neiman illustrates it very well, thanks in part to Anna Pileggi’s deft direction. Neiman’s Albom shows sometimes volatile, physically uncomfortable, and, in the final meeting with his mentor, wildly believable behavior.
Jim Anthony’s Morrie is marvelous. Playing the ill or disabled always seems to create buzz and win awards, but in this case, it’s a masterful performance, verbally incisive and disquieting in its physical accuracy.
Michael Sullivan’s lighting design switches locations for us with ease and grace; Cristie Johnston’s set, with its disconcertingly tilted bookcase, gives us an idea of just how off-kilter life really is.
Interestingly, it’s not nearly as much of a tear-jerker as one might expect, so go anticipating good acting and a chance to reflect on being alive.
Tuesdays with Morrie
through October 22
The New Jewish Theatre
The Wool Family Studio
Jewish Community Center Staenberg Family Complex
2 Millstone Campus Drive, Creve Coeur