A contributed perspectives piece by Glenn Logan Reitze
Live theater fans in the Harrisonburg area seem generally aware that the quality of formerly Broadway musicals performed in local high schools is often amazingly high, with huge casts and well-played and sung live music and surprising fine acting and dancing.
Examples so far this year include stellar performances of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, by students of the combined two Harrisonburg high schools; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Eastern Mennonite School; Anything Goes, at Rockingham County’s Spotswood High, and The Sound of Music, at Broadway High. All were quite excellent, and all were big-cast, exuberant works of music, dance, and acting.
Something very different yet equally excellent in locally produced live theater occurred this past week in the auditorium of the J. Frank Hillard Middle School in Broadway, and will be reprised March 27 and 28 at 7:30 p.m., and on Sunday, March 29 at 3 p.m. in Bridgewater’s Sipe Center at 100 N. Main St.
The Theatrical work is an adaptation of the bestselling memoir, Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Alborn. It is performed by the Off Broadway Players as a medical fundraiser to aid local resident Tim Turner.
Structurally, Tuesdays with Morrie is everything the high school musicals are not. Instead of a hundred or so actors, dancers, and musicians, there are just two actors, plus two others appearing very briefly. And, there is very little music, while all dancing is done (rather touchingly) by the leading actor alone.
Ah, but the performance of that leading actor, Ron Smith, as the play’s Morrie Schwarz, is little short of astounding. He brings to life the character – a dying elderly man – in a manner that is both humorous and deeply life-affirming, as well as being amazingly believable and consistent with the well-honed script.
Smith is well supported by Seth Simmers playing Mitch Albom (the book’s author) as a middle-aged man who is a former student of the dying elderly former university professor who still has much to reach the younger man about life and how to live it.
Both actors are local men. Ron Smith is a retired school principal and former teacher of English, Speech, and Theater at Broadway and Harrisonburg High Schools. Additionally, he has an extensive background as an actor and director for various community theaters in Virginia. Seth Summers has been active in community theater for over a decade, much of this with the Off Broadway Players.
Glenn Logan Reitze is an elderly retired journalist, attorney, and editor best known locally as the author/illustrator of the popular children’s book, Ernie the Easter Hippopotamus. He lives in Penn Laird writing more books for kids, plus plays and short stories for both adults and kids.
