BWW Reviews: TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE at Cumberland County Playhouse

Everyone warned me: from the very first person who heard I would be seeing Tuesdays With Morrie at Cumberland County Playhouse to the stage manager I saw in the lobby just before heading into the Adventure Theatre where Daniel Black and John Fionte hold sway as sportswriter Mitch Albom and his mentor Morrie Schwartz in Albom's sharp and sentimental play, directed by Nicole Begue. They all warned me.

"Be sure to have a handkerchief or tissues with you," they said. "You'll need 'em. Trust me."

I should have heeded their warnings, but assuming I could remain stone-faced and unmoved while the story unfolded onstage, I was taken completely unawares and found myself totally unprepared for the stunningly moving and altogether eloquent depiction of abiding friendship that I experienced in that scant 90 minutes. And there was no way one could anticipate the extraordinary performances of two accomplished actors stripping away the artifice of the stage and replacing it with the genuine affection of two colleagues - two friends, really - challenging each other in the well-choreographed artistic endeavor that is CCP's Tuesdays With Morrie.

While I hadn't seen the play before and had never really watched more than a couple of minutes of the TV movie that followed the bestselling book upon which both are based, I did have a vague knowledge of what to expect.

Mitch Albom, a successful sports reporter and columnist, reconnects with his Brandeis University mentor, sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, during the latter's battle with ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease. As Mitch and Morrie reminisce about their past relationship as student and teacher, they catch up on the intervening 16 years since they last met face-to-face, with Morrie continuing to impart wisdom and witticisms to the younger man, distilling in those 90 onstage minutes the collected experiences of his 77 years on earth.

The story that comes across in Albom's play (written with Jeffrey Hatcher, and based upon Albom's book) is fairly simple and straightforward. In a series of well-written vignettes, Mitch and Morrie learn more and more about each other while offering a heartfelt and completely moving treatise on living the good life. Not the "good life" you might think of at first blush, replete with luxuries and riches, but rather the good life that we should all strive for - one in which we share love, fidelity, friendship and memories with the people who are really important to us. It is a life through which you may exemplify what being a good man is all about: steadfast loyalty, the constant search for truth and an unyielding quest for knowledge.

Certainly, it sounds heady and rather high-minded, but the warmth and compassion expressed so superbly in the play and throughout this stellar production keeps it grounded in reality. The characters (hardly the archetypes you might expect) are so real that you will, hopefully, see the people around you in their very words and actions. And that is probably what makes Tuesdays With Morrie so accessible and helps to keep it from becoming overly sentimental or cloyingly maudlin; surely, you're going to cry, but you're also going to laugh a lot.

We watch Morrie's gradual decline from the vigorous man we first meet during Mitch's freshman year of college, to the helpless, yet somehow still vital and vibrant, man that he remains during the very end days of his life. It's an oftentimes joyous tale, although it is most certainly hard to watch during some of the more dramatic moments portrayed onstage. If you've ever lost a parent (or anyone else, for that matter) to a debilitating illness, you cannot possibly remain stoic and unmoved. As I was warned myself, I warn you now: Take a handkerchief with you. You'll need it.

Of course, the impact of Albom's sweetly told story is helped by director Nicole Begue's pitch-perfect direction and totally focused vision for the piece, which features the ample talents of Daniel Black and John Fionte in the two leading roles (and special attention must be paid to Lauren Marshall, in her largely silent, but altogether essential and wonderfully portrayed, performance as Connie, Morrie's caregiver).

Black and Fionte's performances should be required viewing for aspiring actors: Black is charmingly endearing as Mitch, conveying the character's jumble of conflicting emotions with confidence, interacting with the audience with an effortless ease and plumbing the depths of his feelings with enormous grace. Fionte is nothing short of amazing as he plays the force of nature Morrie with such a sense of joie de vivre - whether he's dancing the foxtrot or battling the physical assault that ALS hurls at his body throughout the play. Fionte's performance is ideally modulated and his depiction of the ravages of disease on Morrie's constitution, leavened with humor both good and slightly wicked, is understated and affecting.

You've been warned. Be prepared to cry, try to stifle any sobs and take time to regain your composure before the lights come up at the end of the show for the joyous curtain call (thank you, director Begue, for lightening the moment so beautifully). But what no one warned me about was the flood of emotions I would feel when I remembered this sweet and heartfelt show. So what do I do now?

- Tuesdays With Morrie. By Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom. Directed by Nicole Begue. Presented by Cumberland County Playhouse, Crossville, through May 12. For further details, visit the company website at www.ccplayhouse.com or call (931) 484-5000.

Pictured: Daniel Black and John Fionte in Tuesdays With Morrie

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