Issue date: 11/2/06 Section: Style

Media Credit: photo courtesy of bill kuykendall TEACHABLE MOMENT - Penobscot Theatre Company is producing "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Jeffrey Hatcher and Mitch Albom. Kent D. Burnham, left, portrays Mitch and Thomas A. Ryan, right, portrays Morrie, the only two characters in the play.

"Dying is only one thing to be sad over," Morrie Schwartz tells his student Mitch. "Living unhappily - that's something else."

It was one of many poignant pieces of advice that Schwartz would dispense to his student, up-and-go sports journalist Mitch Albom, who would later record these meetings in the best-selling novel, "Tuesdays with Morrie." The novel, which spent more than six years atop the USA Today national best-sellers list, was translated into a theatrical production and made its New England off-Broadway debut last night at the Bangor Opera House.

The true story began in the '70s, when Albom was an undergraduate at Brandeis University. There he met Morrie Schwartz, a professor in sociology, and the two became close friends. In the play, Albom's character jokes that in college he "majored in Morrie," having taken all of the classes that Schwartz had offered.

After Albom graduated, he lost touch with his mentor, and 16 years passed before he saw Morrie again. Schwartz continued to teach at Brandeis until he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. When Albom saw a feature on Schwartz on ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel, he flew from his hometown of Detroit to Boston to see Morrie. After their painful reunion, Albom arranged to come to Boston every Tuesday afternoon in order to take one final "course" with Morrie.

"The class met on Tuesdays, and had only one student," Albom's character says at the opening of the play. "The subject was the meaning of life."

The book, which met enormous success in part because of its universal nature, translates powerfully to the stage. Over the course of 90 minutes, actors Kent D. Burnham, as Mitch, and Thomas Ryan, as Morrie, create viable three-dimensional characters from Albom's non-fiction account of Morrie's last days. Ryan in particular delivers an impressive performance as the withering old mentor whose body is shutting down little by little, scene by scene.

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