TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom (Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company). At the Winter Garden (189 Yonge). To May 30. $55-$92. 416-872-5555. See listing. Rating: NN
The tagline for the play Tuesdays With Morrie is “It’s about life.” But there’s not much of it on display at the Winter Garden.
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This stage adaptation of Mitch Albom’s bestselling memoir about his apparently illuminating weekday talks with his dying former sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, is oddly unmoving. Those snivellings you’ll hear (I like to cry with the best of them but remained dry-eyed) are simply unearned.
When ambitious sports journalist Albom (Rick Roberts) finds out via the TV show Nightline that his favourite college prof (Hal Linden) has Lou Gehrig’s disease, he visits the man for the first time in 16 years. That “good deed” makes him re-examine his priorities. He’s worked and played hard, but has he connected to the important things in life?
Schwartz, dispensing banalities like “It’s better to give than receive,” teaches him important lessons. And the baby boomer sees the spiritual light.
The script, co-written by Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher, fails to make either man complex or interesting, and nothing – beyond the obvious death watch – approaches dramatic tension. Worse, there are gaps in logic. Where are Albom’s parents, and how does his experience with Morrie affect his relationship with them?
Director Ted Dykstra’s staging makes awkward use of a white curtain to separate scenes, although Bonnie Beecher’s lighting helps set an elegiac tone.
The extra N goes to the actors. Linden’s Schwartz has a plain-talking charm, but it’s Roberts who carries the production, energetically showing us Albom’s changed spirit even though it’s not there in the script.
