Hicks on Six theatre review
Tuesdays with Morrie
Mayfield Dinner Theatre to August 29, 2010
Starring Jamie Farr as Morrie, Rejean Cournoyer as Mitch
By GRAHAM HICKS
By now, most of the western world has read Mitch Albom’s autobiographical Tuesdays With Morrie – recounting multiple conversations with his favourite university prof Morrie as Morrie was slowly dying from ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Tuesdays with Morrie became a superstar of inspirational books. Because in a secular world that is very afraid of the subject of death, let alone dying, Albom was courageous enough to approach the topic through the most up-lifting person possible, his old college prof, mentor and very dear friend Morrie.
The book answered a severe need in modern North American society to open up to the inevitability and, if not embracement, the wise acceptance of death.
In the book and the play – a faithful adaption – Morrie’s life-affirming character and personality serves as a reminder,, as Jamie Farr puts it in his biographical notes in the program referring to friends now gone, that they “lived for as long as they had left.”
One could argue that it was brave of the Mayfield Dinner Theatre to mount a play about death. Except Tuesdays with Morrie isn’t about death, but about living life so well and so fully, that the inevitability of death is OK.
The play is also about the transition of Mitch, a career-driven, neurotic, over-worked, uncaring, self-centred superstar sports writer as he moves psychologically to becoming a far more balanced and wise individual – thanks to his once-a-week fly-ins to Massachusetts from Detroit to spend time with the old prof that he previously hadn’t bothered to see or call in 20 yers, as Morrie slowly succumbs to the inch-by-inch loss of physical movement that ALS causes.
You can’t flippantly say that Tuesdays with Morrie is a delightful play. Because it does end with Morrie’s death.
But it is sweet, and human, and uplifting. Everybody who sees it leave the theatre with a determination to rid themselves of negativity and drink in this life with as much positive gusto as Morrie.
And to that end, Jamie Farr and Rejean Cournoyer do an excellent job.
Jamie Farr – most famous as Klinger in the all-time TV classic MASH – was a regular at the dinner theatre during an era when supporting actors in hit TV shows were all too happy to do dinner theatre shows during shooting hiatuses, to earn a little extra income.
A good friend of the Pechet family that built and owned the Mayfield Inn for many years, Farr was in shows in 1977, 1980, 1981 and 1989.
Here he is, back and having as much acting fun at 76 as he did 30 years ago!
Morrie would be proud of Farr. For, as his acting proves, he’s as optimistic and as funny and as quick as Morrie – without the slowly suffocating burden of disease.
Farr, in fact, is custom-made for the role of Morrie. Farr hardly has to act! He’s got the Jewish quick humour, the wink of the eye, the buoyancy by nature. And at the same time, he does have to draw on his considerable acting talent as Morrie grows weaker and weaker, minute by minute, through the show’s 1.5 hour running time.
There are minutes, literally minutes, of no dialogue when Farr is on stage (as Morrie) struggling to breathe. Farr has us in his hands, as we lean forward, willing Morrie to draw that deep breath. The acting is there, yet it’s gently hidden beneath Jamie’s essential bonhommie.
Equally remarkable is Farr’s own physical dexterity. At the beginning and at the end (as a metaphorical spirit) he dances on stage with the grace of Fred Astaire and he’s 76! He’s got that huge grin, the sparkle in his eye, and 20 years ago would have a cigar clenched in his teeth. Just so much fun watching Jamie, with all his MASH memories entrenched in our minds, up there loving his acting life.
Rejean Cournoyer is an actor fast becoming an Edmonton favourite, thanks to major roles over at the Citadel Theatre in Pride and Prejudice, Beauty and the Beast, and the lead in Sweeny Todd.
This is a nice change of pace for Rejean – playing a “normal” 21st century character, working the very gradual acting chops of a man going from a desperate mile-a-minute to a fella, through Morrie’s soothing and humourous words, at peace with himself.
Yes, it’s a delightful show, despite the subject. And the timing is just perfect, 90 minutes non-stop that carries all of us with ease.
Tuesdays with Morrie also brought back former Mayfield Dinner Theatre artistic director Ron Ulrich, now running Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton.
The great and enduring Jamie Farr, the up-and-coming Cournoyer, and the steady hand of a veteran director, on a stage that’s bought excellent non-threatening theatre to Edmonton since the 1970s when Howard Pechet first opened it as Stage West.
Some kind of completeness is here – a kind of parallel universe to Morrie and Mitch.