ECHOES OF CHARLIE IN MORRIE’S WORDS
Wit and wisdom of a dying man with MND dedicated to tragic broadcaster
Tuesdays With Morrie GaietyTheatre
Until April 27 ★★★★
The play is based on journalist Mitch Albom’s autobiographical memoir from 1997, a big best-seller that was made into a TV movie in 1999. It’s about Alsom’s relationship with his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz
They had got on very well together, and when Mitch is leaving college he promises to come back and visit Morrie. Which he does – but it takes him 16 years to get round to it.
By then he’s a workaholic sports journalist, travelling, broadcasting and writing every available hour of the day, constantly on his phone arranging or being arranged, unable to relax and get a rounded view of life. His delayed visit has become an almost patronising effort to make up for his broken promise.
The retired Morrie is now suffering from terminal motor neurone disease (MND) that’s gradually destroying his body (shades of Charlie Bird, to whom the production is dedicated).
The paradoxical situation is that a man who has trouble even breathing, and whose body is literally falling to pieces has a more fulfilling mental and physical outlook on life than the successful journalist who once enjoyed playing jazz piano, but is now unable to answer Morrie’s repeated question, ‘Are you at peace with yourself?’
The single visit becomes a weekly affair, more for Mitch’s sake than for Morrie’s. The visits turn the tables on Mitch’s conception of the relationship. Under Morrie’s questioning and philosophical outlook on life it’s Mitch who ends up being sorted out, forced to see that he’s the one who’s struggling in a destructive race with time and talent.
The relationship could have been turned into a schmaltzy account of a wise old man putting a young man on the right road with laboured words of wisdom. But Morrie delights in humorous aphorisms that inject considerable humour into his philosophical world view and into the whole field of human relationships without descending into sentimentality or preaching.
While Mitch is groping with the business of life and death, Morrie puts him straight with his remark that you have to learn how to die before you can learn how to live. And when Mitch refers to not wanting to hurt people’s feelings, Morrie asks how you can spare people’s feelings by denying those feelings?
The set for Morrie’s home (by Ciarán Bagnall) suggesting a roof almost open to the skies and all creation, seems to epitomise his outlook on love, trust, relationships and the acceptance of life as it is. Dan Butler (Morrie) who has a huge backlog of stage and film work, is possibly best known here as Bulldog in Frasier.
He and Stephen Jones (Mitch) make a great combination of contrasting characters – Butler as the understated witty and philosophical former professor and Jones doubling as narrator and as the journalist fearful of mortality and doubtful about the meaning of life. All handled with slick precision by director Andy Arnold.
‘Dan Butler (Morrie) and Stephen Jones (Mitch) make a great combination’