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FOR some
people, Tuesdays With Morrie, the book, is the
new Bible. Or something close to redemption.
The
memoir of then-young trimedia sports journalist Mitch
Albom about his weekly visits to his dying college
professor, Morrie Schwartz, is considered the most
successful memoir ever published. It made Albom a
millionaire several times over, or, better yet, a
philanthropist who founded several charities that he
also heads.
The
premise of the book is the virtue of valuing
relationships with people more than the never-ending,
maniacal pursuit of money. The made-for-TV movie version
was produced by Oprah Winfrey in 1999, with Jack Lemmon
playing Morrie and Hank Azaria as Mitch.
Albom
also cowrote with Jeffrey Hatcher the Off-Broadway stage
version, which had about 40 productions in the US.
So when
the news came out late last year that the oldest
existing theater group in the Philippines, the
40-year-old Repertory Philippines, will have Tuesdays
with Morrie for its opening play in 2008, theater
aficionados went gaga lining up for tickets.
The
better news was that veteran stage actor Jose Mari
Avellana will play Morrie, after a-decade-and-a-half
hiatus. The much-lauded Bart Guingona plays Albom. The
last time Avellana acted onstage was also with Guingona,
in the horror play The Woman in Black, some 15
years ago, also under Repertory.
We had a
chance to watch the second weekend run at Onstage in
Greenbelt. It was the Sunday 3 pm matinee and all seats
were taken, with about 80 percent of the audience having
the same age as Morrie. Middle of the front row was
veteran tri-media actor Ricky Davao.
In the
first 20 minutes of the one-hour-and-45-minute play, I
heard some seatmates dozing off but during the crucial
scenes—Morrie repeatedly saying goodbyes—the “ngorks”
sound turned to sobbing. Nothing beats the litanies of a
dying person, preaching about loving and caring for
other people instead of acquiring material possessions.
It’s as old as the story of Job but it hits you right in
the heart.
For a
preachy play whose source is claimed to have touched the
lives of millions, we can’t help but remember American
playwright Thornton Wilder’s more effective and
far-from-cheesy theater classic, his Pulitzer
Prize-winning Our Town.
If
Tuesdays with Morrie has a funny, wise, charming but
dying old man telling us how to live our life, Our
Town has a young mother named Emily Webb who died
with her child. No matter how morbid that may sound, the
dead Emily looks back at what she left behind, reminding
us to treasure even the simplest things in life. As she
looks at her grieving husband, she realizes that our
time on earth is an irreplaceable gift and every moment
is to be relished.
Of
course, survivors of supertyphoons and armed conflicts
who have lost their loved ones and properties won’t hear
any of this.
Morrie
knows what his young student is going through and where
he is headed, so he tells him to slow down, smell the
flowers, sing songs with his wife.
On the
other hand, Emily was given a chance to see it from the
other side and she remains stuck there forever. The
affected members of the audience are then the ones being
given the chance to correct her mistakes, live a life
free from regret.
Our Town
was written in the late 1930s and won for Wilder a
Pulitzer in 1938. It was revived in 1989 in Broadway,
with Eric Stoltz playing George Gibbs, the husband of
Emily. Stoltz earned a Tony Award nomination for best
actor.
In terms
of characterization, Wilder is definitely the teacher
and Albom, the student. Both aspire for the audience to
lead a simple but meaningful life. It’s just in
Tuesdays, you hear it from the mouths of the
characters, like a preacher during Sunday Mass. Then
again, Tuesdays is directly taken from real life,
while Our Town came from in the über-creative
mind of Wilder during the Depression Era.
In the
case of Tuesdays, the magic of recreating the
written word onstage definitely depends on the actors.
Stuck with cheesy dialogues like “You could have been my
son,” the expertise of veterans like Avellana and
Guingona saved two hours of our life inside Onstage.
At the
beginning, Avellana is the lively and energetic Morrie
dancing the fox trot, tango, cha-cha and the like. We
feel for him when he finds himself helplessly parked on
the couch, the bed and the wheelchair. We feel his
weight as Guingona tries his best to help him shift his
body from one side of the couch to another to prevent
sores.
We can’t
help but admire how Avellana performs two successive
shows every Saturday, the 3 pm matinee and the 8 pm
presentation, with the agility of a man as young as
Guingona. He told the BusinessMirror after a recent show
that he gets energy from Guingona. “Actually, Bart needs
more the energy than I do, because I sit a lot in the
play,” he jokingly told us.
If some
of Tuesdays’ dialogues and scenes were tantamount to
cheese, the time-tested brilliance of director Baby
Barredo (who also did stage design), her efficient
production staff and the formidable skills of Avellana
and Guingona could be the salad dressing and sandwich
relish that make the experience satisfactory. Factors
that could push us to leave Our Town for a while
and move on.
And
Morrie could have been our favorite college professor
who succumbed to stroke a couple of years ago, our
father saying his long final goodbye—and us, his
perpetually busy sons and daughters and former students
chasing paychecks from one office to another in the big
city.
Someone
please hand me a hankie. Too much cheese makes me sneezy.
■
Tuesdays with Morrie is on its last weekend at the
Onstage,
Greenbelt
1, Makati City. For tickets: 887-0710,
www.repertory-philippines.com. |
