Review: Deep, authentic performances carry Tuesdays With Morrie
The Players’ Guild of Hamilton stages popular production that delivers ‘cathartic spirit and a sweet hopefulness.’
Tuesdays with Morrie, on stage now at The Players’ Guild of Hamilton, had been on the radar for co-producers and directors Sandi Katz and Dan Penrose for quite some time. With the Guild coming up to its 150th anniversary season, and the novel coming up to its 25th anniversary, they felt the play “needed to be celebrated.”
“Even though the play has been a popular choice on community theatre rosters for a couple of decades, it has a timeless appeal and relevance and needs to be seen,” says the show’s playbill. Ultimately, its insights are “more about living than dying.”
Based on the best-selling 1997 book by Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man and Life's Greatest Lesson, this is the story of a career-focused journalist, Mitch Albom, and Morrie Schwartz, his former college professor who is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Through his post-secondary years, Albom intends to become a professional musician. While at Brandeis University, he strikes up a friendship with a quirky, magnetic sociology professor, taking several of his classes and meeting him often for lunch and conversation. After graduation, Albom’s career arc veers sharply as he becomes a sports journalist and television/radio broadcaster, always driven by the next deadline.
After losing touch with Schwartz for many years, Albom happens upon Schwartz’s appearance on an episode of Nightline with Ted Koppel and learns that his old mentor is facing Lou Gehrig’s disease. Albom reunites with Schwartz at his home in Massachusetts, and what begins as one last visit turns into a weekly series of poignant lessons about how to approach life.
Tuesdays with Morrie spent almost four years on The New York Times bestseller list, and was adapted in 1999 into an Emmy-winning TV movie starring Jack Lemmon as Schwartz and Hank Azaria as Albom. In addition, Albom collaborated with playwright Jeffrey Hatcher to co-write the stage adaptation that opened at New York Stage and Film in Poughkeepsie, New York and the Powerhouse Theatre at Vassar, and premiered off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village in November 2002. The stage play has enjoyed a 25-city tour and independent productions around the world.
The Guild cast Tuesday with Morrie way back in late spring of 2024. Many months later, a major problem emerged as the New Year began. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the original actor cast as Mitch needed to pull out of the production. For an intimate two-hander, this was potentially disastrous. In January, the Guild advertised immediately to recast the role, needing an actor who could authentically portray a man who was “affable, energetic and articulate with a deep affection for his old mentor.”
With thrice-weekly rehearsals commencing the first week of February and an opening date in mid-March, The Guild’s production struck very good fortune indeed in the form of actor Michael Anania. He impressed Katz and Penrose and had great chemistry with James Vezina (Morrie Schwartz), with whom it turns out he has many mutual acquaintances. During the unpredictable weather of mid-winter, Anania commuted in from Guelph and, in such a short time, made himself a seamless addition to a very active and emotionally-driven play. If it had never been mentioned during the Q&A session I attended, I would never have guessed Anania was a late addition to the cast.
Not only does Anania act convincingly as a man whose drive and bluster cover a growing sense of emptiness and existential confusion, he also skilfully plays the piano at several points in the story, adding yet another layer to how he enriches the production. As well as being an experienced community theatre performer, Anania is a special education teacher by day. In answer to an audience question, he said that in order to embody characters such as Mitch Albom, he draws upon elements of his own experience that resonate authentically with various moments he needs to portray, and admitted to feeling the exertion for a bit after each performance.
For his part, Vezina truly disappears into his character of Morrie Schwartz and gives a bravura performance. He masterfully navigates Schwartz’s physical decline as the play goes on, never slipping or exhibiting a behaviour that wouldn’t fit the scene. During the Q&A session, Vezina gave some fascinating insight into the technical aspects of his craft, speaking of the effort to realistically show the progression of Morrie’s illness in the deterioration of his speech and movements. He never misses with his comedic timing of Morrie’s dry and sarcastic remarks, and it is so interesting that it is the dying man who is responsible for most of the beautifully placed moments of humour that save the story from becoming an uncomfortable or unrelenting ordeal.
With a list of theatre credits across the region, Vezina made his Guild debut last season in the production of Burn. I never met Dr. Schwartz, but as a longtime sociology student, I can attest that Vezina brings a very familiar quirkiness and oddball charm to his Morrie. Even though a photo of the real Morrie was shown on a screen at the end of the play, I remain only partly convinced that he wasn’t present in the theatre.
Katz, Penrose, and stage manager Isadora Moraes make effective use of the Guild stage, placing screens about mid-way back in order to store and hide extra set pieces and evoke a sense of space. Crew members (including head of wardrobe Gloria Onishenko and Moraes herself) are cleverly employed to not only move the set but to act as silent caregivers for Morrie, physically lifting and positioning him from recliner to wheelchair and back again as homecare staff would do.
A play in which death and dying feature so centrally might seem on the face of it depressing and heavy, especially in a post-pandemic global reality where conflict, cruelty, destruction, and fear seem to have seized the upper hand.
“You pretend there’s a little bird on your shoulder,” Morrie (says), “and you ask it every morning, ‘Could today be the day I die?’”
The story of Tuesdays with Morrie is not light and fluffy escapism, so tempting in these difficult times, but it has a cathartic spirit and a sweet hopefulness that makes it a melody rather than a dirge. The New York Daily News has called the play, “a touching, life-affirming, deeply emotional drama with a generous dose of humor.”
The current, local production moves smoothly and nimbly between moments of grief, the awkward physicality of dying, the saving grace of humour, and unconditional love given and received.
The play is peppered with Morrie’s optimistic insights about life, funny quips, and even a few glimpses at the messy bits, dark moments and pain that shape every individual. Fittingly, the epitaph on Morrie Schwartz’s tombstone reads, "A teacher until the end."
Ticket buyers are encouraged to contact the box office ahead of time as some of the remaining shows appear to be sold out on the website.
NEED TO KNOW
Tuesdays with Morrie continues through March 29
March 29, 2 p.m.; March 27, 28, 29, 8 p.m.
The Players’ Guild of Hamilton
80 Queen St. S., Hamilton
Box office: 905-529-0284 or online
Tickets: $33
Run time: approx. 90 minutes with no intermission
