‘Wonderful, wonderful’

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This article was published 22/09/2024 (724 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a flashback scene early on in Tuesdays with Morrie, a kosher salt-of-the-earth professor (Harry Nelken) lingers beyond an invisible doorway, eavesdropping on the tinkerings of a collegiate jazz pianist (a kinetic David Sklar) with ambitions of a breakthrough.

Morrie Schwartz is a sociologist, and he can’t help but to offer a word of encouragement after rapping at the door with the first of Nelken’s sweetly delivered knock-knocks.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Schwartz says, clapping even after Brandeis underclassman Mitchell Albom’s abrasive reception of an unwanted audience. The future sports columnist knows yet nothing of duets, preferring to make music from a soul he’s convinced is fully developed.

Throughout the course of this appetizingly schmaltzy comedy of transformative acceptance and the necessary healthiness of masculine softness, Schwartz — without preaching — humbles his student about the athletic and spiritual value of practice even as he prepares for his final crossover.

Directed by Mariam Bernstein, the opening production of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s 37th season transcends religious boundaries with its sense of humane observance, grounded in an understanding of the Jewish ethic of Kibud Av veh Em, an instruction to honour the father and the mother which extends to the unrelated elders who willingly offer of themselves in such roles.

Schwartz is warmly and boldly embodied by the WJT veteran Nelken, a comedian with pathos who possesses masterful control over the brightness in his eyes and even the curvature of his cheeks. This skill becomes central to the production when Schwartz — a shameless, joyful dancer — is diagnosed with ALS, a disease that sends iron horses to the stable even when their minds are still racing.

As Schwartz comes to terms with a disease named for Lou Gehrig that reminds us that we all exit as we enter, Albom is plagued by proximity to separate ideals of celebrity immortality. Employed by the Detroit Free Press, the columnist has glossed over his own deficiencies in breathlessly describing the highs and lows of Allen Iverson and Andre Agassi. He is in print, on the radio and on television, eager to be just like Mike Lupica.

But an early onset of midlife crisis sends Albom from Wimbledon to West Newton, Mass., where the only tennis balls are at the base of his beloved and forgotten mentor’s walker.

On the third day, Albom visits Schwartz at his spare Boston home, artfully designed by Shauna Jones, who also oversaw the properties. On the right-hand side of the stage is a piano, most effectively used during a despondent rag played by a grief-stricken Albom. Spanning from the left to the centre are a series of bookshelves which become progressively shorter in length as they near the stage floor.

Aside from directing the audience toward Schwartz and Albom’s centre-stage classroom, the shortening shelves could be interpreted as a visual representation of the temporal constraints of degenerative disease: a static clock ticking.

As required by their roles, both Sklar and Nelken pay close attention to their characters’ relative mobility, with Calgary’s Sklar — acting with real feeling — refusing to let anything rest other than the Nokia cellphone atop Albom’s shoulders. Nelken, who worked closely with ALS Society of Manitoba consultants in preparing for his role, accurately reflects the slowness and rapidity of decline, accepting his character’s fate with bravery but also requisite discomfort. Schwartz says he isn’t scared, but that isn’t to say his is an easy chair to sit in.

The script, adapted by Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher from the text of Albom’s best-selling memoir, is sprinkled with textual foreshadowing that sets the table for late-stage drama. In recalling his weekly lunches with his professor, Albom mentions Schwartz’s meal-time multi-tasking. So excited to talk, Schwartz nearly forgets to chew his egg salad sandwich.

The body remembers, but with ALS it forgets how to listen. “The brain says, ‘Move foot,’” Schwartz tells Albom. The foot doesn’t get the message. Eventually, neither do the tips of the tongue, the teeth and the lips: to speak becomes an Olympic endeavour, to eat is to anticipate a spill, to hold hands is to feel only one squeezing.

As the production enters its second act, Nelken’s manner of speech accedes to the disease’s demands of pauses and forced hyphenation. “You’re getting old,” a friend told him. “I … took-it………as-a-compliment.”

While the actors draw the eye, and as Schwartz dispels hard-earned wisdom, the bookshelves are always worth analyzing, if not for the names on their spinal cords than for the photographic bookends holding them in place. (Authentic family photographs of Schwartz, along with the production’s original star, Nicholas Rice, are in hidden view.)

The books also serve as a literary reminder to the early scene when Albom’s concerto is interrupted by Schwartz’s wonderful interjection.

He gives his student a list of books to pick up from the campus store: The Divided Self by R.D. Laing, I and Thou, by Martin Buber and Identity, Youth and Crisis by Erik H. Erikson; the first paragraph of Erikson’s preface reads as follows:

“One of my teachers in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in the late ‘20s was Dr. Paul Federn, a fascinating man equally inventive in new concepts and in slips of the tongue. At the time, his concept of ‘ego boundaries’ was much discussed as important but opaque. We students, in some desperation, asked him to give us as many seminars in succession as he deemed necessary to explain it to us.

“For three long evenings, he held forth; and on concluding the last one, he folded up his papers with the air of one who has finally made himself understood, and asked: Nun – hab ich mich verstanden?”

It’s a question the audience is left asking: Now, have I understood myself?

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com