I confess that I am not a frequent attendee of the theatre. I have seen several plays over the years from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Cats. But nothing particularly recent – at least prior to this week.

Glory is a play written by Tracey Power about a women’s hockey team called the Preston Rivulettes. As a hockey player, I think the most fascinating thing I learned from this play was that there was a women’s hockey league in the 1930’s!

The play covers the first decade of the Preston Rivulettes. Over these first 10 years the team had a 95% win rate. The captain, Hilda Ranscombe, was regarded as one of the best hockey players at the time.

I was a little hesitant when saw that there were only five actors in the play. Two sets of sisters, Nellie and Hilda Ranscombe and Marm and Helen Schmuck, and one man Herb Fach were all the people used to represent the team and times. Herb was the reluctant coach, the other four women were all founding members of the team. Impressively, the two hours duration passed quickly with these engaging and energetic actors.

In addition to covering the impressive record of the Rivulettes the play also brought in other issues of the times. The play started in the depression and the lack of money was a complication of the team. In fact they had to default of the national championship game several years in a row because they did not have the money to host the winning women’s hockey team from the west.

 

Hitler was just establishing himself in Germany at this time and there are tensions between Marm Schmuck, raised Jewish and Herb Fach, whose parents emigrated from Germany. In fact, Canada was not welcoming to Jewish individuals at that time and signs were placed outside buildings saying “No dogs, No Jews welcome”. Not a good moment in our history. But one more element of tension lurking in the background of the players and contributing to the interpersonal challenges they faced. These are issues that faced women at the time, the challenge of having a family and still playing sport. The difficulties of unrequited love comes into play between two of the players on the team. It is a sweet and sad element of the play that was sensitively addressed.

The choreography used to convey was one of the highlights of the play for me. It was a mix of Jazz inspired dancing that did a really interesting job of conveying the speed, aggression and energy of skating on ice. As other reviewers noted, the attention to detail was really evident during the ‘skating’ scenes to the point that skaters always ‘stop’ just before stepping off the ice.

The set design was clever in its simplicity. Looking mostly like one end of a hockey rink, the seven pieces making up the u-shaped boards could be moved to create the illusion of a dressing room, train or workshop. While some people commented the scene changes were distracting, I disagree. I was impressed by how quickly things could be moved, often by the actors.

Like the scene changes, the costume changes were often done on stage in front of the audience. It was interesting to see how only a few pieces of clothing, combined with the force of personality of the actors, gave such an accurate representation of the uniforms of the times.

But the aspect that impressed me more than anything else was the dedication the actors put into their parts. The woman playing Hilda Ranscombe hurt her ankle in the first twenty minutes of her performance, but continued through as though nothing had occurred. She showed the same sort of persistence I expect the women of that first Rivulettes team did as they fought for the right to play and the respect of the fans.

Overall, this was a really well executed performance on a little known local story. First presented by the Western Canada Theatre company, I was able to see this great play at the Drayton theatre. I would recommend Glory.