A hockey love story at GLT
For the second show of its 30th anniversary season, Garrison Little Theatre is offering a little hockey, a little romance and a little … knitting?
That strange combo makes up Paul McLaughlin’s award-winning play Jacques Plante and the Parkdale Knitting League, which takes a whimsical look at the softer side to one of the NHL’s all-time great goalies.
Plante, a Montreal Canadiens legend and the man who introduced goalie masks to the game, had a lesser-known love of knitting. He would make his own toques and underwear while waiting in dressing rooms and travelling on trains.
McLaughlin’s play imagines a lonely Toronto housewife named Violet who shares Plante’s love of knitting, but only communicates with him through letters over a 20-year period. She doubts they’ll ever meet, until Plante is traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1970 and he’s suddenly in her city.
“It has humour in it, but it’s not something you would bust your ribs over,” says co-producer Zdenka Cole. “It’s a compelling show.”
Directed by Rick Nigh, the play bounces from fact to fiction, telling an appropriately Canadian story for the country’s 150th year. It stars Chuck Jagiello as Plante and Edie Pedersen as Violet. Rounding out the cast is Dan Bennett, Trent Matthews, Mike Ceci, Jim Kitchen, Alex Pedersen and Darka Makarec.
Cole says GLT is having a stellar season after the box office upswing last year, which saw more dramatic works blend in with the company’s traditional comedies.
“Our audiences have grown again,” she says. “Our season subscribers keep bringing in more people, their friends. And those people bring other people.”
With the bigger crowds, the company is trying to “diversity,” she adds. Next season will include a murder mystery, the generational comedy Things My Mother Taught Me, and Ed’s
Garage by Winfield’s Folly playwright Dan Needles.
“We’re trying very hard to come up with a variety of shows,” says Cole, who admits she was no fan of GLT doing farces so often (“It’s just slamming doors, and you don’t remember the story the next morning”).
“We’re trying to find comedies with a heart. Not just slapstick.”
The season concludes with Lee McDougall’s romantic comedy in April.