Chris Domig was able to throw within the towel.
After a year-and-a-half-long search, a church chapel in Gramercy Park was the one reasonably priced house Domig, the inventive director of the Off Off Broadway firm Sea Dog Theater, had been capable of finding to mount a manufacturing of “Tuesdays With Morrie.” Chairs must be organized on a set of risers on the altar. The props can be a piano, a few chairs, a walker and a wheelchair.
The firm additionally had nearly no promoting price range.
But it did have Len Cariou, an elder statesman of the theater who in 1979 received a Tony Award for originating the function of Sweeney Todd on Broadway. He would play Morrie, a former sociology professor who, after receiving a prognosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., reconnects with one in all his college students in what turns into a sequence of weekly conferences.
Cariou, additionally identified for his turns in musicals like “A Little Night Music” and “Applause,” had been taken with the character of Morrie ever since he learn the 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom on which the 2002 play is predicated.
“I said, ‘One day, I’d love to play that part,’” Cariou, 84, stated final month throughout a joint interview with Domig at St. George’s Episcopal Church, the place the just lately prolonged “Tuesdays With Morrie” is ready to run by means of April 20. “It’s such a rich role in a show that asks, ‘What if despair and death are not the end? What if there’s something more?’”
But one main hurdle remained, Domig stated: How had been they going to tug off the play with solely a handful of props?
Cariou didn’t miss a beat.
“Len was just like, ‘You know what, we don’t need any of this,’” Domig stated. “‘We can do it as a memory play that takes place in Morrie’s head.’”
That angle is typical of Cariou, stated Erwin Maas, the director of “Tuesdays With Morrie” and Cariou’s longtime good friend and neighbor in West New York, N.J. “He doesn’t need a big theater or feel like anything is beneath him,” Maas stated in a current cellphone dialog. “What drives him is a passion for the work.”
During his greater than six-decade stage and display screen profession, Cariou has additionally performed the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law within the 2015 movie “Spotlight,” and, for 14 seasons and counting, starred as a former New York City Police commissioner on CBS’s “Blue Bloods.”
But the problem of enjoying Morrie is that it isn’t a task that’s simple to depart on the stage door every evening. Many older actors, Domig stated, is perhaps reluctant to grapple with a topic — dealing with the tip of life with grace — which may hit a bit of too near residence.
But for Cariou? “It was easy,” he stated.
“It’s kind of like what Morrie says in the play when he gets the news that he has A.L.S.,” he continued. “He says, ‘I asked myself, am I going to withdraw from the world, like so many people do, or am I going to live?’ And he decides, ‘I’m going to live as long as I have left.’ And that’s pretty much what I’m doing.”
Domig, who performs Morrie’s former scholar, Mitch, reverse Cariou every evening, simply shook his head.
“It’s such a courageous performance,” he stated. “Len has no fear about saying, ‘Let’s see where this lives in me.’”
After rereading the play in the course of the pandemic, Domig stated, he had been struck by its rawness and candor. He enlisted Cariou and Maas in 2022 for what was initially a one-night studying of the play within the basement of the church.
Around 60 individuals sat in folding chairs within the church basement, with Cariou and his spouse supplying wine for the reception afterward. “Everyone was in tears at the end,” Domig stated. “I had person after person tell me, ‘You guys should do this play as a production.’”
Asking Cariou — who was taking pictures scenes for “Blue Bloods” in the course of the day — to do a one-night studying was one matter, however enlisting him for a full run was one other. (Domig knew, he stated, that no matter he might handle to pay Cariou for an Off Off Broadway manufacturing might under no circumstances evaluate with a TV contract — however that didn’t appear to matter. “We wrote him a check for $100 for doing the reading,” Domig stated. “But in the end, he didn’t cash it.”)
Plus, Domig knew he had one thing particular on his fingers — and hoped Cariou thought so, too. He made the ask.
And Cariou stated: Yes.
He was not, it turned out, dissuaded by the play’s frank discussions about dying — whilst somebody who was himself in his twilight years.
“You’re fighting the age question,” he stated. “Morrie’s in his 70s when this happens, so I said, ‘Well, then I’ll be in my 70s.’ That’s what you have to tell yourself.”
Neither was he fazed by the calls for of remaining onstage for everything of a 90-minute present, six occasions every week, whereas raging, screaming, sobbing, falling out his wheelchair and inhabiting the physique of a person affected by progressive respiratory failure.
“I’ve found it invigorating,” Cariou stated. “The muscles you need to do a play are ones you must use. It’s like when Morrie talks about having A.L.S.: When your muscles no longer get the message, they wither and die. I’m making sure the message does get through to mine.”
Domig interjected: “There have been multiple days he’s on set for ‘Blue Bloods,’ and then he comes and does this show. He has incredible energy and stamina — he’s concerned about my energy and whether I’m getting enough sleep!”
Cariou’s dedication to his craft isn’t any shock to his former “Sweeney Todd” castmate Victor Garber, who, together with Angela Lansbury, appeared with Cariou within the unique Broadway manufacturing.
“Being in the rehearsal room with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury; I couldn’t imagine anything greater,” Garber, 75, stated in a cellphone dialog. “Watching Len and Angela do “A Little Priest” on the finish of Act I’ll by no means be equaled.”
“Len is a consummate actor; he lives and eats and breathes it,” he added. “It’s lucky for New York he’s doing it.”
“Tuesdays With Morrie” bought out the ultimate 11 performances of its unique three-week run, and the primary present of its extension.
“We’ve had quite a few young people in the audience, and I think they’re surprised how much it resonates with them,” Cariou stated. “And the same goes for their parents, the adults. They’re reminded of a mentor or a teacher they had growing up who influenced or inspired them, and who, like Mitch, they may never have seen again.”
Others, although, who’ve learn the ebook, Domig stated, have informed him they’re apprehensive about seeing the present, both as a result of they’ve just lately misplaced a liked one or as a result of somebody near them goes by means of the same wrestle.
“Yes, the man dies at the end every night,” Domig stated he tells them. “But the way he goes on that journey — the resilience and joy and encouragement and hope along the way — it doesn’t get more essential than that.”
The present is slated to run a couple of extra weeks, although Domig hopes that might not be the tip of its life.
“We’re happy to do it as long as people show up,” he stated. “And if I could somehow conceive of a Broadway transfer …”
Well, that’d be simply tremendous with Cariou.
“I’m going to play whatever I can, for as long as I can,” he stated.
