Ride For Life: 'Morrie' on stage teaches a powerful lesson

By DONALD LYONS NY POST November 22, 2002

I admit it: I've never read "Tuesdays with Morrie," nor seen the TV movie made from it. All I knew was that it was an account by a onetime pupil of his wise old mentor stricken, by not cowed by, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. And that's about it.

So I was unprepared for how moving and powerful "Tuesdays with Morrie," now showing at the Minetta Lane Theater, turned out to be.

Adapted by Mitch Albom and playwright Jeffrey Hatcher from Albom's best-selling book, it begins with a flashback: Mitch gives Morrie, his Brandeis sociology professor, a parting gift before going on to become a successful sportswriter in Detroit.

One night he catches his old teacher, now gravely ill, on Ted Koppel.

Realizing he's lost touch not only with Morrie but with something basic in life, Mitch starts visiting his increasingly infirm mentor.

Simply and starkly, the play sketches the human give-and-take between the two men. They aren't simply wise geezer and callous careerist - rather, we come to see how they learn from each other.

Director David Esbjornson - late of "My Old Lady" and "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" - knows how to isolate and hammer home emotion without a lot of messy naturalistic detail.

Robert Brill's perfect set consists of a wheelchair, a piano and a bed, backed by windows that show branches in bloom. On this bare ground, the flowers of humanity grow.

The two actors are beyond praise. Alvin Epstein, who is Morrie, was Lucky in the American premiere of "Waiting for Godot" in 1956 and has spent a lifetime in the avant garde.

He is a sage, smart old man who delicately evokes wisdom and love. His Morrie executes a dance at the beginning and the end of the play; it is a crazy burst of ecstasy that nails the play's theme.

Jon Tenney wonderfully captures Mitch's busy careerism and his need to slow down and learn to love.

This play - in writing, directing, setting and, above all, in acting - gives us a student-teacher relationship devoted to a humorous love of life on the edge of death.