The New Canadian Curling Club is a comedy with something serious to say. It’s so worth your time. Don’t miss it.
By Gary Smith | Special to the Hamilton Spectator
Thursday, May 29th, 2025
Hurry hard to Port Dover.
“The New Canadian Curling Club” has opened and it’s a doozy of a play. If you can’t get a seat at Dover, try Port Colborne, but do it fast. This one’s going to be a hot ticket.
The Lighthouse Festival Theatre is known as a home to plays with a decidedly Canuck point of view. This one’s no exception.
You don’t have to know a fig about curling. Rocks and ice are just the backdrop here for warm-hearted comedy.
It’s a feel-good sort of play. And yes, it pushes the right buttons as playwright Mark Crawford makes curling the backdrop for some insightful thoughts on immigration and Canada. More than anything he pricks our social conscience, celebrating the sometime troubled experience immigrants can have searching for the good life in Canada.
Crawford makes us empathize with four ingratiating immigrant characters who find challenges as they assimilate into Canadian culture. Always there is a serious undertow beneath the comedy. Then too, Crawford plays devil’s advocate, making us wince when we catch ourselves laughing at obvious, purposely placed racist jokes that cause us to catch our collected breath.
Crawford builds his characters so well. We acknowledge the fact they’ve come to Canada with open hearts and open minds. And we remember that the melting pot of our nation, our “true north strong and free,” is the fabric of our future.
The skill here is the way he does this without a heavy hand, without ever forcing a depressing political context.
So, here’s the skinny. Four new Canadians, living somewhere in small-town Ontario, sign up for a weekly class in curling. The notion is that meeting once a week at the local curling club, might make them feel more welcome, maybe even more Canadian.
But whoops. There are problems here from the get-go. Slipping and sliding around on a cold, icy surface and navigating a difficult challenge makes for a frosty experience.
Speaking of frosty, these nervous participants soon meet the hard-nosed Stuart McPhail, a crusty old curler and wily caretaker of the rink. Coerced into training the raw, but willing newcomers he isn’t too happy. Not exactly a full-blown redneck, cantankerous McPhail can still snap out quasi-racist remarks like “All in the Family’s” Archie Bunker.
Played to perfection by craggy John Jarvis, McPhail makes the man funny, irascible and vitriolic. He is, however, the glue that holds this comedy together. His overt snap and crackle keep the play from becoming too serious and sentimental, too much of a bald polemic.
The quartet of newbies that turn up for his tutelage are superbly well-rounded, never just mouthpieces for resentment, annoyance and a need for change.
Charmaine Bailey is the tough-talking Jamaican, played with sass and sizzle by lovable Chiamaka Glory. Charmaine’s lived in Canada for many years, but her feathers still ruffle appropriately when she’s condescendingly asked where she’s from.
Mike Chang, played with quiet intensity by Frank Chung, is finishing up a residency at a local hospital. He wants to stay in Canada after his internship is over. He also wants to marry his girlfriend, who just happens to be McPhail’s granddaughter.
Does the girl’s family want the name Chang on the embroidered pillowcases? Given this play’s context what do you think?
Add Anoopjeet Singh, played with warmth and sublimated anger by handsome Andrew Prashad. Passed over yet again for advancement at a local Tim Hortons, he’s lived in Canada for 10 lean years, and still isn’t debt-free and unplagued by racist epithets that taunt him as he’s serving up those smoothies and doughnuts.
Finally, there’s Fatima, a teenager from Syria, played with passion by Mahsa Ershadifar. She’s really the only new Canadian in this quartet. She’s trying hard to assimilate into a new land, even though she’s living with issues from her troubled past.
How these diverse Canadians learn to face humiliation on the ice and still sweep a rock isn’t the main point of Crawford’s play. What we cheer for at the predictable conclusion isn’t their earnest, rather rudimentary skill at a Scottish game brought to Canada by earlier immigrants. No, it’s rather how they’ve found a connection, not only with each other, but with their life in a sometimes-cold new land.
When they sing a rousing verse of “O Canada” near the play’s emotional finish, you could feel the audience in Dover wanting to rise up and sing with them. And isn’t that just the point?
Directed with sensitivity and skill by Jane Spence, this production never shies from the play’s darker, less felicitous moments.
Spence cements the fragmented scenes of the play’s busy second act into a unified whole, helping it build to a satisfying, believable conclusion.
Beckie Morris’s perfect setting — a red, white and blue arena, with a prominent Canadian flag, as well as a Tim Hortons sign or two — suggests the slightly shopworn reality of a local community rink. And you’ll actually believe these folks are working on real ice, even though if you stay in your seat, you’ll see an assistant stage manager spray the fake ice surface at intermission with something that stinks like lemon chemical and makes things awful slippery.
Alex Amini does her usual fine job of providing lived-in-looking costumes and Steven Lucas adds lighting that gives the show a warm enticing glow.
“The New Canadian Curling Club” is a comedy with something serious to say. It’s so worth your time. Don’t miss it.
Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
Gary Smith has written about theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator, as well as a variety of international publications, for more than 40 years.
