Tuesdays with Morrie A course on dying for the living

Repertory Philippines brings the best-selling Tuesdays with Morrie to the Philippine stage as its first offering for 2008. Directed by Baby Barredo, it stars well-respected theater actor Bart Guingona as Mitch Albom and theater veteran Jose Mari Avellana as Morrie Schwartz. Incidentally, it is Avellana’s first stage appearance in fifteen years. For this alone, the play is already a must-see.

“There is no point in loving,” the dying Morrie Schwartz tells his former student from sixteen almost-forgotten years ago, “loving is the point.” It is lines like this that made Tuesdays with Morrie a non-fiction bestseller when it was first released over ten years ago. Well, lines like this, and word-of-mouth—especially Oprah’s.

Written by sportswriter Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie tells the true story of how Mitch rekindles his friendship with his university mentor, sociology professor Morrie Schwartz. Already enjoying a high-flying career that had nothing to do with the passions of his university days, Mitch fulfills his long-delayed promise to visit his old professor when he happens to watch the latter being interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline. Morrie has been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, a progressive and usually fatal neuromuscular disease, and, ever the teacher at heart, he has decided to chronicle his journey to death and share it with the world.

What is initially a cursory visit to a dying man turns into a long and final lesson on life, death, and loving. Morrie asks Mitch to come back the next Tuesday, then the next, and soon, Mitch has a magical chain of Tuesdays with a friend and a beautiful, true story about one remarkable man who was, in his own words, “a teacher to the last.” And while a lot has been said about Mitch’s prose, there is no denying that he does, indeed, have a powerful, inspirational story—one that merits retelling, in print, in film, and now, on stage.

Repertory Philippines brings Tuesdays with Morrie to the Philippine stage as its first offering for 2008. Directed by Baby Barredo, it stars well-respected theater actor Bart Guingona as Mitch Albom and theater veteran Jose Mari Avellana as Morrie Schwartz. Incidentally, it is Avellana’s first stage appearance in fifteen years. For this alone, the play is already a must-see.

Like the book, and the film (which produced by Oprah Winfrey), the play also chronicles the friends’ enlightening, funny and poignant conversations on life and its subtopics, such as love, marriage, family, regrets, forgiveness, and death. Morrie has wise words to say about everything. On regret, for example, he says, “We did what we could.” On forgiveness, he advices, “Forgive everyone, everything… Forgive yourself.” On acceptance, he teaches, “Don’t let go too soon; don’t hold on too long.”

And my favorite, what he has to say about, well, the importance of carpe diem: “If you wait until your last second to say what you want to say to someone, you better have great timing. The wise and wonderful things you would have said are the kind of things you should be saying all the time.”

Both Guingona and Avellana issue striking performances. The play runs for an hour and 45 minutes, without intermission, and they manage to keep the audience engaged all throughout their character-driven exchange. It’s a challenge, especially, given the kind of lines, like the ones above, they have to deliver—but it’s a challenge they both easily rise up to, and neither one of them ends up sounding even a tad bit sappy or didactic.

Avellana becomes Morrie. His portrayal of a dying fatherly old teacher whose muscles are slowly succumbing to paralysis is very touching. It is our loss that we don’t see him performing more often, though this should be a start. Guingona, on the other hand, translates into the easily-relatable tough guy we’ve taught ourselves to be as soon as we hit the “real world”—or the “real world” hits us— and his portrayal of the journey back into the essential truths of his youth is equally moving. 

One week after the Manila run, Little Boy Productions is bringing Tuesdays with Morrie to Cebu. “Don’t hide your light under a bushel,” Morrie tells Mitch as they near the end of the course. Morrie sure didn’t—and it is his light that you should make sure to catch this weekend.

 Watch Tuesdays with Morrie on February 2, 2008 at the SM City Cebu Cinema 2. For more information and ticket reservations, please contact the Arts Council of Cebu at 233-0452 or 233-0236.

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