Hockey night at the Boardmore
Rhindress’ ‘Home and Away: A Hockey Musical’ set for Cape Breton stage
It’s hockey night in Sydney. The Screaming Eagles are host- ing the Moncton Wildcats and it’s the first period.
I am sitting three rows back from the boards at the Eagles end of the ice. In the front row, across the aisle, is a family with school-age boys and girls enthralled at the players and the huge throng of cheering people around them. Families, old hockey buddies, teenage boys and girls, some with their own dreams of hockey glory, are all around me.
An Eagles defenceman slams a Wildcat into the boards directly in front of the family across the aisle. The youngest girl’s big blue eyes grow bigger at the sudden thunder of the spectacle happening inches away from her.
Even if you’re not a hockey fan, there is something about hockey and being Canadian that seems inevitable, especially in our smaller centres.
That’s the territory explored by “Home and Away: A Hockey Musical,” the new production at the Cape Breton University Boardmore Playhouse. It opens Tuesday and runs until Sunday, Feb. 25.
On a set recreating a hockey rink, with commentators “Ron” and “Don” parsing the action as a linesman hands out penalties for “holding your brother’s girlfriend,” a small town family comes to terms with their dreams and disappointments and the central role that hockey plays in their lives.
The book was written by Charlie Rhindress, co-founder and former artistic director of Live Bait Theatre in Sackville, N.B.
His dark comedy, “The Maritime Way of Life,” has been produced in all four Atlantic Canadian provinces (including in Cape Breton by the St. Anns Bay Players) and was nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award as best new play in 2000.
His musical, “Flying On Her Own”, a look at the life of Rita MacNeil, was produced by Neptune Theatre in Halifax. In 2016, Rhindress also wrote, “I’m Not What I Seem: The many stories of Rita MacNeil’s life,” a biography of the beloved Big Pond singer-songwriter.
Music and lyrics for “Home and Away” were written by Dean Burry, a Newfoundland composer with a strong Cape Breton connection. He scored “The Bells of Baddeck – The Alexander Graham and Mabel Bell Story,” whose libretto was created by Cape Bretoner Lorna MacDonald. This show played for two summers at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site in Baddeck.
The CBU production is directed by Todd Hiscock, with musical direction by Barb Stetter. The cast includes Heather Kerr, Rob Bowden, Bruce Cathcart, Anita Danyluk, Ron Newcombe, Kate Burns, Robert Lewandowski, Tony Hajjar, Joe MacPherson, Jill Taylor, Josie Sobol and me.
The Tuesday performance is “pay what you can night” admission by cash donation or a nonperishable food items for the CBU students food bank.
As part of a CBU alumnae event, and also to promote the play, some members of the cast (myself included) sang a tune from the show during the first intermission at the Eagles’ Quebec Major Junior Hockey game.
It was fun and intimidating singing to a large crowd of actual hockey fans.
I hope some of them make it to the show and experience some of the excitement of being at a play the way I experienced the excitement at being at my first hockey game in about 10 years.
While he is in town next week to see his play, Charlie Rhindress will also read from his works at the Governor’s Book Pub on Tuesday at 7 p.m., at the Esplanade, Sydney eatery.
Reading with Rhindress will be Cape Breton author and poet Charlotte Musial who will read from her most recent book, “The Night Life of Chairs” (Boularderie
Island Press).
Musial’s book is a flavourful mix of verse and prose, memoir and meditations, whimsy and wisdom, and at previous readings, endeared itself to readers and listeners.
Both authors will have copies of their work for sale and signing.
The book pub also features the open stage where audience members who have a short excerpt
from an unpublished work can present it to an appreciative and supportive audience.
There are drawings for door prizes from the Jar of Consequence for audience members who have made donations to the jar.