Good Game spins a great yarn

Ray Mordan swears he knows a good play when he sees one and that’s what he’s found in a rambunctious hockey play, The Good Game.

Recently relocating to Calgary with his actress wife Arlene Irwin, Mordan first encountered The Good Game in 2004 when it swept the awards at Theatre British Columbia’s Main Stage Festival.

It was written by Roy Teed, who ran a community theatre company in northern B.C. called the Kersley Players.

“For years, Roy had written these quirky little plays that would win in his zone but couldn’t really compete against the more established plays that other zone groups produced. The legend goes that Roy and four of his friends were having a few beers when one of the guys challenged him to write a play that might actually have a chance at winning the festival,” says Mordan, adding, “Roy wrote a hockey play to showcase the four guys who were drinking beer with him that night.”

The result was The Good Game about an old-timers’ hockey team that reunites for a charity event. They’re a scrappy bunch of guys but the audience only gets to see four of them.

The foursome includes Charlie the goalie, who may have taken one too many pucks to the head, Zack the star player who blew out his knee on the last play of the last game of the winning season, CJ Macdonald, the enforcer who has become a mild-manner English teacher, and Francois Pinky La Vac, the French Canadian who always wore a pink T-shirt for good luck.

The audience also gets to meet a female radio reporter who may have been Zack’s old flame, Jim the old-time playby-play announcer, and Brian B, the obnoxious current radio announcer.

The Good Game won the festival, leaving its mark on Mordan who, in 2006, was asked to play the radio announcer for a most successful fundraiser in Vernon. In 2013, Mordan directed his own version of The Good Game “in the local hockey rink just before they put the ice in. We put bleachers on the rink and everyone got a burger and beer included in the ticket price. It was a rowdy, roaring success. A kind of hockey version of dinner theatre.”

Mordan wasn’t finished yet. “In 2015, I was asked to play Charlie the goalie for a fundraiser for the Vernon minor hockey league and had as much fun starring in the show as the audience had watching it. When I came to Calgary and heard that Alan Leboeuf’s Confederation Theatre Society was dedicated to producing Canadian plays, I told him I had a show he had to stage and gave him a copy of The Good Game.”

When The Good Game plays in the Pumphouse’s Victor Mitchell Theatre Feb. 25-29, Mordan will be back in goal as Charlie. Kevin Chinook plays Zack, whose NHL dreams were dashed and his heart broken 30 years earlier, Gino Savoie is CJ the enforcer turned English teacher, and Stan Argue-simes plays Pinky.

Joining the hockey players are Lisette Allen, Rylan Nilsson and Arthur Zrill with Alan Leboeuf directing.

For more information and advance tickets, check out confederationtheatre.ca