Spending life-affirming Tuesdays with Morrie

THE Lime Tree Theatre invites audiences to spend Tuesdays with Morrie, as they bring the Breda Cashe production to the Limerick City stage on February 20 and 21 at 8pm.

Tuesdays with Morrie was written for the stage by Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher and is the autobiographical story of Albom, an accomplished journalist driven by his career and Morrie Schwartz, his former college professor.

Directed and produced by Breda Cashe, it features Terry Byrne and Andrew Murray in the leading roles. In addition to playing the Lime Tree Theatre, the production will come to Glór, Ennis on April 19 and 20.

Terry Byrne, who plays the character of Morrie, outlined to The Clare Champion what the play is about, its parallels with his own life and also the fun and joy it encompasses, despite its quite serious subject matter.

“The play is set over a period of years. It’s set in Brandeis University in the East Coast of the United States and there is a student there called Mitch Alborn and a professor called Morrie Schwartz, who meet there and develop a great friendship. They are great pals and they promise to stay in touch when Mitch goes away from college. He’s away for 16 years and he is so busy and caught up in the rat race of work that he forgets and he loses touch with his college professor. One day he is watching television and he sees a programme called Night Line, an Oprah style programme and he sees this guy, Morrie Schwartz, being interviewed. He has motor neuron disease – a progressive illness which leads to you being unable to use your muscles. Morrie is brought on the programme because he is a really iconic guy in the university. Morrie goes on the programme and it’s a huge success. He’s a great life coach and he talks to people about their lives so Mitch says ‘I better go back and see him because I feel a bit guilty about not seeing him’. After one visit, the two of them realise that Mitch, although he is very successful and busy, is leading a very troubled life,” Terry outlined.

What starts as a simple visit turns into a weekly Tuesday pilgrimage and a last class in the meaning of life. Although Tuesdays with Morrie is the title, Terry says the play could be called ‘The liberation of Mitch’, because during this period Mitch progressively realises the futility of the life he was living through the conversations he has with Morrie.

“It all sounds like it is a vigil of death, but it is anything but that. It is enormously funny. It is truly a very funny play, besides being a really serious play. This play is like all good plays – it has truth and comedy in it. For me, it is great, I absolutely love the part. I have most of the funny lines in it and it is very enjoyable,” he said.

Terry revealed that having been on the stage for quite a long time, he has found a particular connection to this character, as it holds certain life parallels for him.

“I had a friend who died from motor neuron about three years ago and I spent a lot of time with him. I used to bring friends down to meet him every Monday. I would pick him up and we would go to a local hotel and we would have a chat. It is extraordinary really, it was ‘Mondays with Dominic’. I spent a lot of time with him, even up until he died. There were huge parallels to my own life. I watched all these things happen and his physical behaviour change and I suppose I picked up a lot of information. When I started to do this part, I found I knew a lot more about the physical dimensions of it than I realised and that makes a difference,” he said.

Having began touring last April, Terry says the play has been a huge success. It is rare the audience aren’t on their feet at curtain-closing. Having done two stints at the Gaiety Theatre, they will return there for a third performance in the early summer.

“We started off this play with just three of us – myself, Andrew Murray the other actor and Breda Cashe, who got the rights. When we started it off, we took no wages or anything in The Viking Theatre in Clontarf. It grew from a 60-seat theatre to packing the Gaeity Theatre, which is 1,200 seats. We find a lot of people have read the book also,” Terry added.

Life-affirming and life-enhancing, heart-breaking and heart-warming all at the same time, Terry noted, “Religion is having a hard time of it at the moment and there is a need to believe in something more than the rat race and I think this offers a philosophy of warmth and love and a belief in not letting yourself get carried away in the capitalsm of it all. It makes you stop and think about life and think about death long before it happens”.

For booking information, visit www.limetreetheatre.ie or contact the box office on 061 774774. Alternatively for the Glór performance, contact 065 6843103 or visit www.glor.ie.