Revisiting Morrie

Winnipeg Free Press

a day ago

On opening night, Nicholas Rice arrived on one foot.
It was a Saturday in September, and the Winnipeg-raised actor was meant to be playing the titular role in Tuesdays with Morrie, the first production of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre's 2024 season. But instead of portraying the sage professor at the heart of Mitch Albom's now-classic story of mentorship, mortality and menschlachkeit, the performer was at the Berney Theatre watching from the audience as Harry Nelken served as a last-minute Rice substitute.
'I did audition for the role, but my good friend Nick Rice got it,' recalled Nelken in an interview days before the première. 'And then my good friend Nick Rice had an accident.'
Landon Nesbitt photo
Nicholas Rice is portraying Morrie Schwartz in a Toronto production of Tuesdays with Morrie.
After the fourth day of rehearsals wrapped up, Rice and his co-star David Sklar returned to their rented accommodations, an old house off Westminster Avenue.
'I had to go up 18 outdoor steps to get into my second-storey flat,' recalled Rice before the last WJT season opened, sitting down for an interview at Schmoozer's Cafe.
'Not a problem. But for some reason, David couldn't get into his main-floor flat. I said, 'David, it's OK. I think I know a back stairway. I'll go down there, get into your apartment and pop your door open from the inside.''
However, Rice was unable to enter the apartment and while he was trying to figure out what to do, he locked himself out.
'There was a locked door behind me and a fence in front of me,' said the actor, whose earliest dramatic inklings were nurtured at Kelvin High School in the 1960s. 'I thought, the hell with this. I'm not going to stand here and keep my friend waiting on the other side of the building. I'm gonna climb this fence. I can do that. I used to do that as a kid.
'So I climbed very carefully up, thrust my left leg over the top. Didn't hurt my gentles in any way. Now bring the right leg over. Perfect — more than halfway there.
'I admit, this is a stupid thing for a 73-year-old man to be doing.'
The ascent was clean, but the damage came on the dismount. Rice initially was able to hobble up the stairs, thinking it was a sprain, but around midnight, he called director Mariam Bernstein.
'I said, 'I think I have to go to emerg.''
Bernstein came over and insisted that he call an ambulance.
Writhing on the floor with what turned out to be a severely fractured heel and internal damage, Rice still managed to quote Blanche DuBois as the paramedics ushered him to the Health Sciences Centre.
'I told them that I'd always depended on the kindness of strangers. Nobody laughed,' he said.
With Nelken called in as a backup, Rice spent nearly two days in the emergency department before splitting a curtained room with a man named Gord.
'We listened to the Labour Day Classic — Bombers and Saskatchewan — and we actually became quite good friends, although I never saw him.'
After his discharge, Rice got around with a mobility scooter, and on opening night, he wheeled his way down the Asper Jewish Community Campus's 'Main Street' to tell his Morrie story, which as far as he was concerned had unceremoniously finished.
Little did he know that one year after his fall, Rice would get another shot at Morrie glory.
Last spring, Rice rented out a venue in his native Toronto for a four-show run of his autobiographical fringe show A Side of Rice, which premièred at Winnipeg's 2024 festival. In the audience was Toronto Metropolitan University theatre instructor Marianne McIsaac.
'She said, 'Nicholas, I know somebody who's looking for Morrie. I gave them your name.'
Within days, a Zoom audition was set up for Rice with King Theatre Company artistic director Chloë Rose Flowers and Josh Palmer, a former McIsaac student who'd already been cast as Albom.
'Instantly, you can get a really good sense of who Nick Rice is as a person and a performer. He has that Morrie sparkle, that Morrie twinkle in his eyes,' says Flowers, who cast him on the spot for the one-year-old GTA company's third-ever production.
Nearly one year after his accident, Rice takes the stage tonight for the first time as Schwartz for a two-week stand at the King.
'I just feel so blessed,' says Rice, who is dedicating his performance to his high school English teacher, Rudi Engbrecht. 'It's almost like a Mitch Albom experience, and in this particular book, a guy messes up, but then miraculously gets to roll back the tape, make amends and get it right the second time.'
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Ben WaldmanReporter
Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.
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