Globus Theatre in Bobcaygeon is presenting the final summer play of its 20th anniversary season with a production of Canadian playwright Kristen Da Silva’s curling comedy Hurry Hard, running for 11 performances from August 16 to 26 at the Lakeview Arts Barn.
The play revolves around Sandy and Bill, a formerly married couple whose curling team split up when they did seven years before. Separated into a men’s team and a women’s team who begrudgingly share the ice at the local curling club, the two teams are about to compete in a big regional bonspiel against a neighbouring community. When a medical emergency leaves the men’s team short of a player, the two teams will need to reconcile if they have any hope of taking home the trophy.
Like Globus Theatre’s previous August production of Tip of the Iceberg, Hurry Hard was commissioned through the playwright development program of Port Dover’s Lighthouse Festival, where it premiered in July 2019. That fall, it went on to win the Stage West Award for best new comedy at the Tom Hendry Awards, handed out in Toronto by the Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Oakville-based playwright Karen Da Silva sets her plays in Ontario locales from Sudbury to Stayner. Her other plays include Book Club, Five Alarm, Sugar Road, Where You Are, The Rules of Playing Risk, Beyond the Sea, and Gibson & Sons. Canada’s most-produced playwright Norm Foster has called her “one of the brightest new comedic playwrights in all of Canada.”
In 2018, Globus Theatre staged a production of Da Silva’s Sugar Road, which featured Globus Theatre’s artistic director Sarah Quick in a supporting role as the brash country music fan Caroline Dawn.
“I played a character that got stuck in a sleeping bag,” Quick recalls in a media release. “We can’t wait to bring more of this type of physical comedy and snappy one-liners to our stage again.”
Quick will also perform in Hurry Hard, along with Globus regulars Dave Pearce and Kevin Sepaul and new company members Elana Post (Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Port Stanley Festival Theatre) and Alex Furber (Drayton Entertainment, Theatre Orangeville).
According to playwright Da Silva, sports provide an “alluring subject for storytellers.”
“In addition to the natural abundance of story ingredients — protagonists and antagonists, a ticking clock, built-in stakes — there’s the idea that competition brings out the best and the worst in us,” Da Silva explains. “There’s a quote most often attributed to Heywood Hale Broun, ‘Sports don’t build character, they reveal it’.”
“As a writer interested in relationships and the comedy that arises from them, this offered too many possibilities to resist,” she adds. “This is why Hurry Hard concerns itself less with curling than with what curling does to and for the characters. If you come for the curling, I promise there is some.”
Hurry Hard runs for 11 performances at the Lakeview Arts Barn in Bobcaygeon at 8 p.m. from Wednesday, August 16th to Saturday, August 19th and from Tuesday, August 22nd to Saturday, August 26th, with additional 2 p.m. matinee performances on Saturday, August 19th and Thursday, August 24th.
An optional dinner is available at 6 p.m. before the evening performances. Tickets are $45 for the show only, or $90 for dinner and the show, and are available by calling the Globus Theatre box office at 705-738-2037 or online at globustheatre.com.
Globus Theatre’s 20th anniversary season will continue this fall with Rhinestone Cowgirl starring Leisa Way (October 17 to 21), The Case of The Mysterious Mystery starring Chris Gibbs (September 23), the comedy show Girls Night Out (November 4), and the murder mystery A Christmas Story .. of Murder (November 15 to 25). From December 5 to 17, Globus Theatre will present its annual traditional British panto, Puss In Boots by Sarah Quick.
