A COLOSSAL LEN CARIOU MAKES ANY DAY
A GOOD DAY FOR TUESDAYS
I have seen many a famous performer hit the stage in their senior years with a cabaret or theater performance, something I usually regret as my memories of the youthful vigorous actor is now replaced with a sad remembrance of a once-cherished star (Burt Bacharach in concert and Burt Young in a play after each had a stroke was downright painful). But any reticence about attending Tuesdays with Morrie starring the original Sweeney Todd, Len Cariou, was vanquished from the start. At 84, his majestic presence, indomitable spirit, and unconquerable joy are just as powerful as ever. While the show will most likely sell out even with an extension, you are well-advised to attend Sea Dog Theater‘s lovely revival.
As we enter St. George’s Episcopal Church, Mitch Albom is playing gorgeous jazz on a grand piano. Chris Domig, who portrays Albom, not only plays exquisitely but wrote the music you are hearing. Albom introduces to us his college professor and good friend Morrie Schwartz. Curiously, we watch as Cariou, who uses a cane to walk, shimmies at the piano with joy. Then Mitch draws us into the past to show us how he and Morrie first met and came to develop their strong bond over Tuesday luncheons. After four years of these meetings, in 1979, Mitch graduates from college, and, in a poignant farewell, promises Morrie he will definitely keep in touch.
But then, as they say, life happens. Mitch moves to New York with his uncle to become a jazz pianist, and, after some years with mediocre success, the death of his uncle prompts him to take a new direction with his life. So he goes back to college to study journalism, and, by 1995, he has climbed the network ranks to become a prosperous and well-regarded sports journalist.
That’s when, scanning the tube one night, Mitch comes across a Ted Koppel interview on Nightline. The interviewee: Morrie Schwartz. His once close and beloved college professor has been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). Though it’s been sixteen years now since they’ve spoken, Mitch decides to make a visit. But what was intended only to be a brief, one-time consolatory visit turns into “a weekly pilgrimage” and a final lesson on the meaning of life – and death.
What follows – dialogues and anecdotes about a life lived fully and a death fully embraced – defies concise synopsis. Suffice to say, as Morrie’s health slowly declines, so, too, does Mitch’s pride and vacuous sense of achievement, until, at the end, one life ends and a new life begins.
Any play described as depicting a “last class on the meaning of life” must certainly contend with the risk of being preachy and overly sentimental, and, having never read Albom’s book or seen the film adaptation, I was certainly skeptical to see how such a feat could be accomplished. To my great satisfaction, however, despite the nearly total absence of the fourth wall – usually something I gravely dislike – there is never a moment in this production that comes across as treacly, schmaltzy, or cloying – and for this I can only credit Erwin Maas‘s sensitive, superb direction, the performances, and Guy de Lancey‘s set and exquisite side lighting, which comes from outside the windows and along the colonnades.
The question of how to live a “good life,” a life rich in meaning and purpose, is as old as it is seemingly without absolute, universal answer. Sea Dog Theater’s Tuesdays With Morrie brings this question to the fore of our minds – somewhere we may seldom find it – and juxtaposes it with its absolute limit: death. “I do as the Buddhists do,” Morrie tells Mitch, “Every day, I have a little bird on my shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be? Is today the day I die?’” In our pell-mell world of wanton entertainment and immediate gratification, a play that shakes us with the sobering question of our being towards death can be as rare to find – anywhere – as it can be disconcerting to behold. Fortunately, Morrie’s more hearthstone than brimstone, and there’s plenty of warm humor to ease the load, making this a wonderfully vivacious and poignant experience.
photos by Jeremy Varner
Tuesdays with Morrie
Sea Dog Theater
St. George’s Episcopal Church, located at 209 East 16th St
Mon-Sat at 7:30; 95 minutes; ends on April 20, 2024
for tickets ($35-$75), visit Sea Dog