Nov. 16, 2005 - Issue #526: Sex, Lust & Love

Theatre notes

Game on

Hockey Stories for Boys • Living Room Playhouse • To Nov 26 • reVUE During the NHL lockout, various other leagues stepped up to centre ice to fill the hockey void of a winter without the likes of the Oilers or the Flames. Not only did the AHL’s Edmonton Roadrunners offer some fun, fast-paced hockey, but people were also paying attention to women’s and university leagues. And with the high quality of hockey found from these non-NHL teams, there were some murmurings about their right to play for the Stanley Cup. Some felt that if NHL players didn’t think they were earning enough for the prestige, there were plenty of others who’d like nothing more. Not only that, others argued, but maybe attention should be paid to the fact that the Cup started out as a trophy to be awarded to the best Canadian hockey team each year.

Although these feelings have subsided since the NHL returned to the ice, the idea of repatriating the Stanley Cup is surely one that has crossed the mind of countless hockey aficionados. It may be a pipe dream, but if Hockey Stories for Boys is any indication, it sure has the makings of a good tale.

The play, penned by local actor George Szilagyi, starts out with Neil (Murray Utas) imagining a glorious skate on the river, flying down the ice with stick in hand on a crisp winter day. But, alas, he awakes to the shambles that has become his life. Sure, he’s got a beautiful wife and a boy who loves the game, but professionally, he’s struggling. He’s been laid off from his IT job, and he can’t seem to find anything else that will sustain his family. It’s two months before his wife Wendy (Lora Brovold) discovers that he hasn’t been bringing home any substantial bacon, and she is none too pleased with the situation.

Increasingly desperate, Neil agrees to drive to Toronto with his old friend Darcy (Keith Schooler) to make a “delivery” which will earn him $5,000. While he certainly needs the money, Neil really wants to go to visit the Hockey Hall of Fame, where he wants to find the answers to some serious questions he has about the Stanley Cup.

If there has been one constant in Neil’s life, it’s been his love of hockey, and Utas steps into this adoration with ease. His face lights up as he recounts momentous plays in the game’s history and his voice is completely full of reverence. Together with Schooler’s Darcy, there’s a sense that the whole world could come crashing down before they’d talk about anything else.

Although Schooler takes on a couple of other roles (and really hams it up as Jacques, Neil’s dream-sequence hockey coach), it’s as Darcy that he is truly in his element. Losing one of his legs in a car accident when he was a teenager, which sadly rendered his promising hockey career over, Darcy is a little rough around the edges, but Schooler infuses him with enough humour and pathos to make him somebody that not only you’d likely know, but also somebody you’d have a soft spot for. However, in some respects, you could say that both Utas and Schooler have it easy; neither of them seem as though they would have had to dig very deep to portray the all-Canadian, hockey-loving boys that they play.

Brovold, on the other hand, faces some bigger challenges with her multiple characters, but she moves between her male and female personas with ease, and is a joy to watch. With the slightest voice and body language change, Brovold manages to fully inhabit each of her characters, from the loving Wendy to the hockey hero Billy Duke, and it’s with Duke that she really shines. It would be superbly easy to fall into a pat jock stereotype with him, but she avoids the temptation, coming off as complex and nuanced, with her working on a layer beyond the script.

While Hockey Stories for Boys is something of a work in progress, the Azimuth’s production takes it a long way towards its potential as the poignant story of a man’s journey to find his way. On the one hand, first-time playwright Szilagyi has a real knack for well-paced and natural dialogue, but on the other, there’s a hell of a lot of hockey talk here, especially when Neil and Darcy get going. And with the play clocking in at over two hours, there are points that the action gets bogged down—especially when things start to really heat up with the wonderful stolen Stanley Cup caper. Still, the play does get to the heart of what people love so much about hockey. Not only does the sport offer us heroes and role models, but a sense of belonging as well. V

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