Jamie Farr is most at home with straight-up comedy.

This won’t come as any surprise to the millions of TV viewers who know him for his portrayal of the wacky, cross-dressing Corporal Max Klinger in the iconic 1970s series M*A*S*H.

What might be more surprising is to see him as Morrie Schwartz, a man dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease and doing it with dignity, humour and insight, in the current Theatre Aquarius production of Tuesdays With Morrie.

Farr admits it’s a role that is challenging, stretching his Thespian muscles.

The story, based on the book by Mitch Albom, chronicles the author’s real-life experience of visiting a former college professor who’s dying of ALS and learning meaningful life lessons from those encounters.

“I like to do silly shows,” Farr says. “So, it is a challenge for me to say, Okay Jamie, you’re going out there and you’re going to do Morrie Schwarz, this wonderful, crusty, irascible intellectual who’s dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease and you’re going to have to cry and you’re going to instruct this young man, before you go, what the meaning of life is. Which is love.”

But, he says, it’s a challenge that’s well worth the effort.

“It’s a very touching play. And, even though it’s about a man dying, it’s also a celebration of life,” he says, adding that he’s “actually learning a bit of that lesson. You have to stop and, as they say, using cliches, Stop and smell the roses. You have to learn how to do that, how to appreciate those things in life that are so meaningful.”

Farr admits that, when offered this role, he had never seen the play. He had seen the 1999 movie, starring Jack Lemmon as Morrie, but found that while Lemmon was “brilliant and magnificent” in the role, he found the play version a more moving vehicle for the story.

The movie opens up too many areas, showing other characters and settings. The stage version is “better with just the two of them,” Farr says. “It plays better – the intimacy.”

Farr and director Ron Ulrich, also Theatre Aquarius artistic director, will be taking Tuesday’s With Morrie to Edmonton’s Stage West in June, albeit without David Keeley, who’s playing Mitch opposite Farr’s Morrie in Hamilton but who has a commitment in Toronto later this year.

While Farr has done a fair bit of stage work, including dinner theatres and touring companies – last time he was in Hamilton he was touring in The Odd Couple with William Christopher, who played Father Mulcahy in M*A*S*H – his heart is in television.

“I love doing TV. I really do.”

For one thing, he says, much of the TV work in is Los Angeles and since he lives in southern California it keeps him close to home and his family – wife Joy, daughter Yvonne and son Jonas and, of course, five-year-old grandson Dorian.

And, after all, television is where he cut his acting teeth. He spent two years with The Red Skelton Show before being drafted into the army. He garnered a huge fan base during 11 seasons of M*A*S*H.

He allows that, despite “being in the business 55 years and doing all kinds of shows,” it’s definitely Klinger that people remember. “I was fortunate enough to be on a hit television series which is playing all the time, all over the world, continuously. So that’s what keeps you famous.”




Farr says the M*A*S*H crew were a close-knit group and still keep in touch. He spends time with Alan Alda (Hawkeye Pierce) whenever they’re in the same city since Alda makes his home in New York. And there are regular dinners and get-togethers with those based on southern California, including Bill Christopher, Loretta Swit (Major Margaret Houlihan) Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicut) and his wife Shelley Fabares, and Harry Morgan (Colonel Potter), although at 93 Farr notes Morgan “doesn’t get around as much anymore.”

Does he watch the show? “I do on occasion,” Farr says. And, since he’s been in Hamilton, he’s discovered it on the History Channel around the time he gets home from the theatre. “I turned it on and, you know something, I got hooked on it again. There was one on the other night that I had totally forgotten and I said ‘oh my gosh, where are we going with this one?’ So it was a brand new experience for me.”

Tuesdays With Morrie continues to Feb. 20 at the Dofasco Centre for the Arts. Tickets are $40-$50 Tues.-Thurs. and $45-$55 Fri.-Sat. Box office: 905-522-7529 or 800-465-7529.