Theo Fleury story takes to Calgary stage

Actor Shaun Smyth has been taking lessons in how to handle a puck from Theo Fleury, the former Stanley Cup champion whose complex life story is taking to the Calgary stage, based onthe bestsellingmemoir Playing with Fire: The Highest Highs and Lowest Lows of Theo Fleury.

Fleury has also shown Smyth how he laces his skates, how he tapes his socks and pads, and how he speaks to much bigger guys forthe actor'srole in the play, which opens for previews May 1.

For the Alberta Theatre Projects production, Smyth, whose credits includeThe Collected Works of Billy The Kid and Stones in His Pockets, will spend the entire play on an artificial rink, installed in the theatre specifically for theshow.Playing with Fire is a one-man showbased on Kirstie McLellan Days Fleury memoir, which captures the in-your-face attitude and honest voice of the ex-NHL star who played for severalteams, including the Calgary Flames.

Smyth is very conscious of his responsibility inrepresenting a hometown hero a guy who helped the Flameswin their first Stanley Cup in 1989, scored a spectacular overtime goal in the 1991 playoffs, andthen became team captain in 1995.

"It certainly adds to the fun, whenever you play somebody whos still alive and living in your city, but I kind of like that it drives me a little harder, you know," Smyth said in an interview ahead of the shows opening Tuesday.

The story begins with Theo,a runt of a player who skated rings around his opponents and drew fans from across the Prairies to the Russell, Man., rink where he started his hockey career. It captures anecdotes from his time with the Winnipeg Warriors, as a terrifiedchild who was sexually abused by his junior coach, Graham James, and the fierce ambition that sent him on to theNHL and Team Canada.

'He was totally fearless, that was part of his m.o. He learned this from a very young age that if he acted a little crazy out there people gave him space' Shaun Smyth on playing Theo Fleury

Smyth says what he most wants to get pitch perfect is Fleury's volatile, fiery brand of hockey andhisfearless, frequently insulting demeanorto bruisers who towered over him and commonlyoutweighed him by nearly 90 pounds.

"He was totally fearless, that was part of his m.o.," Smyth said. "He learned this from a very young age that if he acted a little crazy out there, people gave him space andalso he took a lot of penalties because whensomeone got him on the boards or tried to kick his legs out with their stick, hed turn around and say, 'Ill take your f---ing eye out," and he did this because he said, If I didnt do that, I would not have had a career. They would have punched me once and they could have wiped me out.'"

But the script descends into darker territory in its second act. Thesubstance abuse, the breakup with the mother of his child, the injuries and depression, the time Fleury had a gun in his mouth and was ready to pull the trigger, the legacy of his sexual abuse by James.

Playwright penned Probert bio

Playwright Day had never written for the stagebefore though she fully understands the world of hockey, having penned Ron MacLeans Cornered and Bob Proberts Tough Guy before writing a bestseller with Playing with Fire. She says she was sitting in a New York production of Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fishers one-woman autobiographical show, when she realized that Fleurys memoir would lend itself to the same form of storytelling.

"One-man shows are very difficult theyre tough to pull off. You have to have the right actor, you have to have the right tone. They have to be funny, but they also have to have a lot of dynamism, and thats hard when theres one guy on stage," Daytold CBCNews.

She wrote the first draft more than two years ago and admits the play she initially turned out was not stage ready. But APT artistic director Vanessa Porteous read it and with director Ron Jenkins, and Fleury himself, helped her create something that would work.

APT's Playing with Fire is very much like Fleurys memoir, following him from the time he first laced up to today.Day said Fleurys own keen sense of what would interest people guided her in writing.

"Hes a wonderful raconteur, he really tells a great story. I think you saw that in the book. When youre with Theo, he can take a certain incident, and make it colourful and make it poignant, and get to the meat of what happened. And I think that comes across on the stage," she said.

She sees Fleurys life as a journey, made all the more moving by the hardships he overcame on the way.

"Even though there are parts of his story that are very dark and chaotic, it works the way it works when youre in a theatreyoure laughing, and then youre crying and then youre laughing again. I hope the book is like that too. I hope you feel youre spending a night with Theo."

Smyth is a little taller than Fleury who atfive-foot-six was one of the NHLs smallest playersand a little heavier than the hockey star was in his incredible rookie year.

"I watched a lot of tapes, a lot of video of himon YouTube and games online, but Im not doing an impersonation I want to be able to take the material and interpret it myself. Whatever I show up on that stage, you have to believe itthe audience has to believe it," Smyth said.

Working with Fleury himself has been a bonus. The player hasgiven pointers on how he might tell these same stories.He has has been generous with his time, working with Day to develop the script, then later with Smyth to polish his performance.

Director Ron Jenkins calls the space where Fleury tells his story the "nether rink," reflecting the fact that he turned to the ice as a place to work out his problems.

"Let me put it this way," Fleury says in his memoir. "When I was on the ice, I knew who I was, but I didn't have an identity when I left the rink."

Building a hockey player body

Smyth has been skating and playing for the past nine months to trytobuild the body of a hockey player, especially the lower-body agility that an audience would expect of anNHL player.

Although heis alone on the ice for the two-hour show, he's not always the focus of attention.The ice itself changes starting out as an outdoor prairie rink, morphing into the small-town arena, then transforming into an NHL space with the Jumbotron coming down. Video effects bring Fleury into the theatre, for his moments of triumph on the ice.

Smyth sees Fleury's life as a great Canadian story of survival,and says he admires the ex-NHL star for putting everything out there so publicly.

Fleury himself is taking a hiatus from the public eye, after watching his case against James end with onlya minor sentence for the former junior hockey coach.Day says she worried aboutFleury as that unfolded earlier this year.

"Not many people have to see the face of their rapist in every newspaper, on thousands of websites, next to photos of their own in several publications, and on blogs all over the place," Fleurywrote in his blog in April. Manitoba is appealing the two-year sentence.

"Not many people have to give public interviews and answer questions about their rapists for weeks on end. I have. And I thought I was powering through it, that it wasn't affecting me all that much. I was wrong," he said.

Playing with Fire: The Theo Fleury Story begins in previews Tuesday, with the official opening night May 4. It runs until May 19.