BY ED ADAMCZYK



“Tuesdays with Morrie,” the Niagara Regional Theatre Guild’s next production, has become an honored staple of regional theater.

Based on a short and wildly popular 1997 book by sportswriter Mitch Albom, the play with limited staging and a two-person cast is inexpensive to produce but full of importance, humor and wisdom. It is the modern and American version of an ancient tradition, an elder’s handing down of life’s lessons to a young acolyte.

Albom wrote about his real-life visits to his Brandeis University professor, after going through a few professional and personal dislocations. Meanwhile, Morrie, the old professor, was in a battle with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). The conversations, the teachings and the wisecracks are becoming hardwired into American theater, and the play’s messages of love and forgiveness are updated versions of themes found in theatrical pieces that go back to the ancient Greeks.

In the Niagara Regional production, Tim Voit plays the turning-cynical Mitch and Doug Smith is Morrie. Night & Day sat down for a brief but joyful interview with Smith, whose long and distinguished career in journalism and television has somehow left time for a life on the stage. Like Morrie, Smith has found the knack for “living every day.”

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QUESTION: You’re 73 years old. This is not your first play.

ANSWER: I’ve done about 50 plays. I really enjoy it, the whole operation, meeting other people, the challenge.

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Q: Is this a good living?

A: I have made, in my theater career, $67.50. That was for being the only white man in the cast of a play at the African-American Cultural Center. We took it on the road and it made a little money.

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Q: There’s no business like show business.

A: My first play was in high school. I was told it was a great place to meet girls. They were right, but the girls were always a foot taller than I was.

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Q: “Tuesdays with Morrie” is a two-man play, and you’re on stage practically the whole time, and you’re supposed to be getting progressively debilitated. Is that a challenge?

A: It’s a real challenge. Our director, Les Bailey, challenged me to take the script — it all happens on 11 different days — to find how the illness had debilitated Morrie and to show how he had gotten. That really is a challenge, but it’s so well-written that you can feel his deterioration in the lines.

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Q: And you contract ALS.

A: (Yes) Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s just an accident, but the latest book I read was “Luckiest Man” (by Jonathan Eig), a new biography of Lou Gehrig, a third of which is devoted to his fight with ALS. So I know more about ALS. It’s a wonderful book.

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Q: And the character you play is full of wisdom. Is this typecasting?

A: The funny thing is, Morrie and I are political opposites. He’s an old radical. One of his lines is, “First they took my class, then they got radical.” Morrie is kind of saying he inspired these people.

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Q: Would that be a description of you?

A: Not even remotely. There is a scene in the play where he says they’ll pull the draft deferments of anyone who earns less than a grade of C. So Morrie gets everybody together with a plan; give them all As. I would have just handed them their marching orders. But he’s such a lovable guy, you can always see how he arrived at the position he holds. He’s not an ideologue at all. He’s a grand fellow.

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Q: Tell me about your co-star, Tim Voit.

A: Tim is, strictly speaking, a little young for the role. The great thing about Tim is his ambition, as an actor. He intends to go to New York, to act there. He wants to make more than $67.50. It’s amazing to me how quickly he’s picked this up. His future is bright.

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Q: Other than politics, does Morrie reflect you?

A: That would be terribly arrogant of me to say, but ... all the wise and wonderful things we want to say at the end, we should be saying every day of our lives. About 10 years ago, somebody said something nice to me about something I’d written and I thought, “Wow, that really meant a lot to me,” so I try to give compliments like that. If you’ve got something nice to say, don’t hesitate. That’s very much my view, and Morrie’s.

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Q: Morrie is an old man in decline.

A: He’s 78.

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Q: You might take the credit for being an old man, but “decline” doesn’t really describe you.

A: This was a challenge, though. The last play I was in, “You Can’t Take It With You” — there was a particular line I’d missed three days in a row, and I said to myself that if it happens even once during the performance, I’ll never do another play again. Nothing worse than an actor fumbling for words. So I really worked hard at it and was surprised to find that, as far as the memory is concerned, I can still do it.

Ed Adamczyk is a freelance writer from Kenmore.



IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Tuesdays with Morrie,” presented by the Niagara Regional Theatre Guild

WHERE: Cardinal O’Hara Performing Arts Center, 39 O’Hara Road, Town of Tonawanda

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, 8 p.m. Oct. 31 and Nov. 1

COST: $14 general admission, $13 students and seniors, $10 ages 16 and younger

MORE INFORMATION: Call 284-6358