"You can't always do it alone.....we need teachers" says Professor Morris Schwartz to his young student Mitch Albom, in the latter's play TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE adapted (with the collaboration of Jeffrey Hatcher) from his autobiographical novel.
The play describes the relationship between Mitch and Morrie, which is revived after a gap of sixteen years when the older man is dying of degenerative nerve-disease. In a series of weekly meetings, every Tuesday, Morrie offers tender yet uncompromising life-lessons which ultimately help his "student" alter his hard-bitten, hard-driving attitude to himself and the world. It is not surprising that Mitch often refers to Morrie as "coach".
The play's "teachings" are made all the more poignant by their truthfulness and a steadfast refusal to wallow in sentimentality. The realities of illness and death are shown as they are; neither exaggerated nor covered-up.
Meera Khurana has directed with a fine, sensitive hand. There is a welcome respite from artificially-accelerated pace, which is so often used (and misused) to sustain audience-interest; at the same time, there is never any sense of self-conscious portentousness imposed on the play's tragic trajectory.
A portion of the credit for this surely belongs to Akash Khurana, whose portrayal of Morrie does not fall into the trap of mawkishness or tear-jerking. An 'actor's actor', he offers a subtle, insightful characterisation, conveying the man's facets of charm, pragmatism, humour and wisdom. Even so, the scene where the professor breaks down in tears, unable to eat because of poor muscle-control, is very moving; and Khurana graphs his physical decline with frightening, near-clinical precision.
Mitch is played by Adhaar Khurana with a deadpan quality which, towards the play's end, becomes more emotive as the character softens. However, there is a difference between playing deadpan as an actual expressive choice by an actor; and a lack of any expression, becoming deadpan by default....wherein lies the younger Khurana's weakness. As a result, the character only rarely leaps across the footlights.
Here, one has to mention a couple of faux pas. We are told Mitch is an accomplished jazz-pianist; and he plays a piano onstage, while accompanying his singer-wife. But it becomes obvious that the actor's knowledge of the instrument is rudimentary at best; and it would be kinder to give him a pre-recorded soundtrack of piano-accompaniment. Moreover, the latter part of the scene, where a background score does indeed take-over during Morrie's imaginary dance with Mitch's wife, is clumsily staged.
The production's design by Akarsh Khurana is exemplary. His set is spread right across the NCPA's Experimental Theatre, with four clearly demarcated locales, each of which is accurately, beautifully detailed (with the exception of the car, which looks like a sofa with a steering-wheel). His lighting has tremendous finesse, responding vividly (yet delicately) to changes in mood and emotion; delineating faces, objects and spaces with the masterstrokes of a painter.
In all, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE is a rara avis in the theatre today: a quiet play in the midst of so much fatiguing hysteria. However, its civilised gentility packs a hidden punch in sheer wealth of truth and meaning, for those who seek and value it.
Jiten S Merchant was the English drama critic for the Times of India (Mumbai) from 1989 to 1997, after which he free-lanced for the paper and on the Internet. He has worked in amateur and professional theatre as actor and sound-designer, and has directed and performed in staged play-readings. Currently, he is an accredited reviewer for Seen and Heard International, one of the oldest and most widely-read online purveyors of music-criticism, for whom he covers concerts of Western Classical music and Opera in Mumbai. His recent pieces are available on his blog: merchant-at-large.blogspot.in
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