The last time I saw Tuesdays with Morrie I shuttled down to Olympia Little Theatre with a great friend and ended up with some wet eyes because the show was so moving. I took my mom this time, to Lakewood Playhouse’s production, and the same thing happened. Darn allergies.

What makes this show so great is the raw emotions it exposes in the human condition, friendship and internal angst.

The story centers on Mitch Albom, a sports writer and personality (played by Luke Amundson), who finds himself in the study of his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz (Elliot Weiner) after 16 years of life and career-ladder climbing.

Schwartz becomes sort of an expert on death when he learns of his own fatal diagnosis. Albom comes to visit when he learns of his mentor’s illness, for what he expects will be just a brief hello and goodbye sort of visit. It turns into a series of lectures over the span of months as he visits every Tuesday to talk to Morrie about life, death and the meaning of both.

Audiences connect to the play because they can personalize it to their own lives and the loss of someone dear. But what also makes this show live or die is the acting. And this show is very much alive.

Amundson was last featured in Tacoma Little Theatre’s Star Spangled Girl, where he played a socialist radical reporter on the march to expose “the man” and all his conspiracies to keep society down. Here, he plays a reporter bent more on making a dollar than seeing social change. But Albom changes slowly as his Tuesday meetings with Morrie become less of another item on his calendar and more about a lifeline to his own personal salvation.

For his part, Weiner is a gem, as always. He is a rock when it comes to bringing his all to a role. He is remarkable in his nuanced performance of an ailing professor that never loses his wit and wisdom as his body cruelly fails him and he is reduced to being an infant in a sweater vest.

The duo goes from being student and teacher to friends, and then something that is larger with the combination of the two. Albom finds his humanity and focus, while Schwartz has the chance to be a teacher one last time as the march of his disease parades through his body.

[Lakewood Playhouse, through Nov. 8, Friday-Saturday 8 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m., 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd. SW, Lakewood, 253.588.0042]