Glory Skates its Way into the Hearts of the Audience at Theatre in the Round

Theatre in the Round glides into 2025 with a season appropriate production that centers around of all things, Hockey! The feel good play of the year, it plays like a really good sports movie, with a lot of humor and moments that deal with real world issues as well. Inspired by the true story of Canada’s Preston Rivulettes, it tells the story of a Canadian women’s hockey team in the 1930’s. Opening in 1933 during the great depression and ending just after the declaration of War between Germany and Poland in 1939. Aside from thrilling to the rise of a team you come to vocally root for, the play also delves into societal issues like equality and anti-semitism among others. Those moments play powerfully but do not darken the overall feel of the show, which is inspirational. It feels like the perfect balance of getting swept up in cheering your team, hopefully to victory, personal drama, and wonderfully executed humor. A cast that felt like a team rather than a group of actors. Everyone in the play and every aspect of it from the game choreography to the set design works to create something unlike anything I’ve seen on stage before. I mean have you seen hockey games played in a theater, in the round before? I sure hadn’t, and I’m so glad I did.

The team consists of four characters, 2 pairs of sisters. Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe played by Brynn Kelly and Gabrielle Johnson, and Marm and Helen Schmuck played by Kelly Solberg and Josie Ramler. Kelly plays Hilda, who is the driving force behind the creation of the team and its star player with a drive and single minded focus that sells the audience on the team essentially being willed into existence by her alone. Johnson as her sister is terrified of the puck, but as Goalie she manages most of the time not to throw up over it. Her storyline is the polar opposite of her sisters in terms of subtlety, whereas Kelly sells her character to us with vocal passion and energy, Johnson’s role calls for her to underplay her passion and barely more than hint at a love that dare not speak its name. Ramler’s Helen is less single minded and deals with being torn between the team and other desires like being a mother. She has a great scene where she takes offense at the game announcer when he makes a comment about her femininity, the way she proves she’s a woman is a laugh out loud moment. Hilda pushes for women in hockey because it’s all she wants to do, for Helen it is more about Equality and not having her gender define what she can and cannot do whether it be playing hockey or marrying outside her jewish faith. Solberg as her sister Marm identifies more strongly with her faith and in one of the plays most dramatic moments confronts the anti-semitism she feels. It’s this moment that explains her rough playing in a game as a deeply felt injury crying out to be seen and felt. Solberg plays the moment so raw and brutally that it lands like a body check to the boards.

The show is so much about these teammates that it’s tempting not to mention the two men in the cast, and if they were any less perfect in their roles I’d probably leave it there. But Daniel Stock as their reluctant coach perfectly modulates that journey from not caring to deeply caring about this team. It’s humorous when he doesn’t want to be there and then emotionally satisfying when he does begin to actually care and want them to succeed. Glory is very much A League of Their Own on ice and Stock has the Tom Hanks role, but he does his own thing with it and it’s so integrated into the whole that it’s hard not to feel as though the team isn’t complete without him. The final performer is Ron Lamprecht who is perfect as the Announcer for all of the hockey games. Lamprecht sounds exactly like an announcer and it adds a sense of reality to the games as well as helping us to fill in the action on the rink. That action is choreographed by Antonia Perez and it mixes simulated hockey play with dance in a way that shouldn’t work, but really does. It doesn’t feel like the performers have all of the moves down 100% but that kind of adds to the charm a little bit. Perez’s highlights are the more obvious dance moves and the fights that breakout. I loved the simplicity of the set design by Keven Lock and his assistant Essel Beidler, the painted on ice rink complete with blade marks in the ice was a great touch. Director Sean Dooley has found a way to make a theater in the round staging of ice hockey games work, it’s something I couldn’t quite imagine before I went. He has some nice touches for the in the round staging, including some front row patrons in section B who are the unfortunate witnesses to Nellie’s losing battle with her nerves early in her hockey career. Another nice touch is that the show opens with the women changing after their final Softball game of the season. They strip out of their uniforms to their modest undergarments and then into street clothes. This has the effect of acknowledging their gender up front, that they are women, they have all the soft parts and then we see them as successful hockey players. It isn’t salaciously done, it’s there to illustrate Helen’s point, that they can be women and athletes, and neither diminishes the other.

I’m not a hockey fan, never played it outside of with friends at the park so that isn’t a requirement in any way to enjoy the show. But it is a great hook for hockey fans who maybe are not theatergoers usually. If I loved it, and I did, hockey fans will get as much if not more out of it I’m sure. So if you got Hockey fans in your life make sure to take them to see Glory during its run, they will thank you. Glory runs through February 9th at theatre in the Round. For more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.theatreintheround.org/glory/

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