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Winnipeg Free Press
13-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Revisiting Morrie
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.' 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. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Living together in peace and harmony
When civil war broke out in his native Syria, it wasn't often that Majd Sukar left his Aleppo apartment. In the fall of 2010, he had moved to the city from a small village called Homs, intending to lead the standard life of a university music student. Sukar was prepared for obsessive solo practice, but not like this. 'I had six months of peace in Aleppo, then the whole country went to protest on the 15th of March. By the end of that year, the country was falling apart,' says Sukar, 33. Ruth Bonneville / Free Press From left: Grace Budoloski, Elliot Lazar and Ryan Abdullah Hooper with Majd Sukar playing the clarinet on the balcony during rehearsals of The Band's Visit. 'The only certain thing — the only thing I was sure about — was the clarinet.' Trained as a pianist and as a classical Arabic vocalist by his grandfather, an Aramaic priest who guided Sukar through the intricate melodies of Syriac Christian hymns, the musician gravitated to the clarinet, using the instrument as a reeded passport across war-torn borders. Under threat of ISIS bombardment, he ventured to internet cafés to watch videos of the Romani-Turkish player Hüsnü Senlendirici and Greek virtuoso Vasilis Saleas. 'I had to teach myself. Most of the time, the clarinet is your friend,' he says. Fourteen years later, Sukar, who now lives and plays in Toronto, where he trained at Humber College, is still enamored with an instrument that feels right at home whether in Armenia, Tunisia or Krakow. One never can predict where a career in music will take you — for Sukar, it brought him to Winnipeg to appear in the final production of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre's 2024-2025 season. In casting the role of Simon in The Band's Visit — a cross-border musical that won 10 Tony Awards in 2019 — director Dan Petrenko needed to find an actor who fit a precise description: fluent in Arabic, fluid in jazz improvisation, skilful and soulful with the clarinet, and crucially, available to work. 'There was pretty much one person in Canada we found who checked off those boxes,' says Petrenko, whose mandate at WJT has been marked by a commitment to politically relevant musicals; Pain to Power, a musical grappling with Kanye West's antisemitism, had sold-out runs in both Toronto and Montreal earlier this spring after premièring in Winnipeg in 2024. 'It sadly is becoming more and more relevant,' says Petrenko. Sukar had only appeared in one production as an actor: a November production of Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille called Mafaza. Meaning dry, barren desert and etymologically connected to the Arabic root for 'winning,' Mafaza featured four Palestinian and Syrian artists reflecting on the themes of grief, justice and healing in the context of the Middle East. With Abdul Wahab Kayyali, Sukar composed and performed music that drew on his own experience. Petrenko, who before joining WJT was founding artistic director of Toronto's Olive Branch Theatre, caught wind of the performance and was confident he had found his Simon. After reading The Band's Visit script and listening to the music, Sukar was convinced to let his clarinet carry him to Winnipeg. 'I loved the story, which reflects that in the Middle East there are so many people who just want to live in peace. They aren't involved in war. They aren't involved in blood and I believe that's the kind of message I have in my mind, that everyone could live together in peace and harmony.' Ditto for Omar Alex Khan, who plays Tewfiq, the stern conductor of the titular band, an Egyptian police ensemble from Alexandria invited to play in Israel at a newly opened Arab Cultural Centre. Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Majd Sukar plays Simon, the clarinetist, in The Band's Visit, playing at WJT until May 11. 'I was struck by the music and the songs, but also I loved that it's about a group of Israeli people and a group of Arab people, but it isn't a political show. Yes, it's about these groups of specific people in this show, but there's a universality to it. It's about any group of people, who, like all of us, are trying to figure ourselves out, understand our feelings, figure out the world, trying to survive,' Khan says. To develop his character, Khan wrote a three-page diary entry as Tewfiq, outlining his multiple motivations. 'A director taught me to make three lists: what the character says, what the character does and what the character wants.' Tewfiq, like Sukar and the show's cafe owner, Dina (played by Israeli-Canadian actor Anat Kriger), would like to build a life in music that isn't defined by conflict. 'I think it's the perfect show for nowadays because it talks about humanity, not sides,' says Kriger, who studied musical theatre at Toronto's Randolph College. But the actors, like the work they bring to the Berney Theatre until May 11, are more than aware of the current political climate in Israel-Palestine and have leaned into the show's emphasis on shared culture as a hopeful olive branch. During Elections Get campaign news, insight, analysis and commentary delivered to your inbox during Canada's 2025 election. Dina and Tewfiq's bond is solidified by shared musical and filmic inspiration during the gorgeous number Omar Sharif. The characters find common ground in their affection for the Oscar nominees's early films, including The River of Love, a 1960 feature referenced throughout Itamar Moses's Tony-winning book. Members of the cast watched the film, based on Anna Karenina, together shortly after they began rehearsing. 'It's a tragic story, but it's Dina's favourite,' says Kriger. 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. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
