REVIEW: Playing With Fire a triumph at socially distant Mayfield Theatre
Edmonton’s moribund theatre scene is showing signs of life. The Mayfield Dinner Theatre (among others) is presenting full evening performances, offering many of the features that have made the venue so popular – while observing the pandemic guidelines laid down by the AHS.
There have been flickers of theatrical life in the last six COVID-haunted months. The Citadel has produced a number of interesting events both virtual and live-on-stage; and the Freewill Shakespeare folks have mounted a lively portable backyard mini-entertainment based on the works of the bard, directed by ace helmer Dave Horak and featuring three marvellously talented young performers.
This new Mayfield production – Playing With Fire: The Theo Fleury Story until Oct. 25, starring Shaun Smyth in the title role – is not your parents’ dinner theatre. That becomes obvious the second you walk in the door and notice the hand-sanitizing station. In the lobby, patrons are guided into social distancing. The auditorium itself has been reconfigured – with a distance of two meters between the tables. Clear-tempered see-through glass has been placed between the various levels of the theatre. You are shown to your table by a masked attendant.
It has become very obvious that despite the comments of many experts, COVID-19 precautions are still fairly fluid, but as far as this (84-year-old) dispassionate observer can tell, the Mayfield seems to have touched all the bases. Gone is their signature buffet. In its place, a four-course menu. You place your order when you arrive and it is served at your table. The mandatory face mask can be removed for eating purposes. If you rise from your seat you are asked to replace the mask. There’s a starter (artichoke dip) and a choice of remarkably fresh salad. You can choose one main course from four offered (Roast Beef Strip loin, Chicken Supreme, Salmon with Brandy Cream, and Shrimp and Vegan Coconut Curried Vegetables). For dessert there was a sampler platter of goodies ranging from cookies to Cheesecake with Strawberry Compote. Observed our server, “When we had the buffet many diners took several desserts – we decided to carry on that tradition.”
On with the show!
The last play the Mayfield produced before the pandemic began was Rock of Ages – one of those big budget, multi-performer Broadway spectacles that are the theatre’s life-blood [the very kind of potential COVID trap with its large cast and backstage intimacy that could set off a trigger event). This time, ingeniously, Mayfield Artist Director Van Wilmott has reached back to resuscitate a small one-set, one-person biographical entertainment.
The production resides cozily in a no-man’s-land between theatre and sport and is a tested audience-pleaser in both worlds.
Playing With Fire is Calgary author Kirstie McLellan Day’s lively stage recreation of her best-selling biography of the controversial hockey superstar Theo Fleury. The play debuted in Calgary in 2012 and has run successfully all over Canada – with the exception of Edmonton, where it hit the goal post at the Citadel in 2015. (The reason for that was suggested to be Fleury’s mastery over the Oilers when he played for Calgary – a long-remembered embarrassment in the mind of many Edmonton hockey fans. In fact, at one point when an anecdote fell flat at the Citadel show, Shaun Smyth broke the fourth wall, and asked the crowd, “Too soon?”)
Playing With Fire is a powerful, often funny, even poignant evening of theatre. A major contributor to the success is director Ron Jenkins, one of Canada’s busiest freelance directors (and winner of an astonishing ten Sterling Awards over the years). Jenkins took one look at the proposed play and threw out any thought of hotel and locker rooms. He put it on ice and on skates. – on a plastic “ice” that uncannily recreates the frozen surface, even down to the spray of frost when the skater comes to a quick halt.
Under Jenkins’ concept even the ice takes on a personality, morphing from small town prairie rink to NHL arena, complete with Jumbotron. The big screen provides a graphic background for Smyth’s galvanized and intense performance. Fleury’s life from his earliest years in Manitoba and through to his retirement is told with a comprehensive video of his career – one ingenious element is the use of Hockey Cards to show Fleury and the various companions and opponents he met. Through some kind of theatrical magic it is all in perfect sync with the actor’s rapid-fire delivery. For 15 minutes before the show starts, there’s a fun quiz of NHL lore projected on the big screen. The Mayfield has wisely abandoned their usual stage to place the ice surface below us in what might be called the orchestra pit, to give the feeling of looking down from the stands.
Theo Fleury’s story is one of the corruption of innocence. The production doesn’t obscure the uncomfortable facts and patrons should be prepared for some florid locker room talk. Fleury was a Saskatchewan hockey-mad kid whose harsh life was full of sexual abuse and pain in an against-all-odds rise in one tough game. At only five feet six inches tall, he played hard and was a driving force in winning the World Junior Championships, Stanley Cup, Canada Cup and Olympic gold. He scored over 1,000 career points and, before he flamed out, played in the NHL for 16 years. All the while (as the play as well as the book and television documentary demonstrate) Fleury had a near-mythical addiction to alcohol, drugs, strippers and gambling that would have killed a normal person. One of the jokes in the show is that he somehow managed to burn through $25 million worth of hockey income in 20 years. Often at the height of his frenzied dissolution he would leave the flesh-pots of Chicago or New York, go immediately to the rink and play brilliantly – and repeat the feat night after night.
Despite his prodigious appetites and awesome physical capacity, Fleury’s fall from grace led to a suicidal moment, when standing alone amidst the ruins of his life he put a gun into his mouth …
Smyth is a wonder. The Calgary actor’s intensity and passion never falters and he carries the entire evening (100 minutes or so with a five minute pause in the middle). He never leaves the rink, constructing a whole NHL of teams, playing all the positions and recreating many of Fleury’s famous plays.
The playwright is a natural storyteller. He lived the life and his anecdotes of the players, coaches and contracts; the high-jinks and locker room horseplay are hilarious. At the bottom of this engrossing tale is a game kid and ferocious adult who despite his reputation of being crazily out-of-control on the ice had a frisky sense of humour – and comes off as a decent man.
Top photo by Liam Richards/Electric Umbrella (from Saskatoon production 2020)
