The Hockey Sweater: A Musical

If you’re used to seeing big, splashy Broadway musicals, you may be wondering how this one compares. Short answer: It’s fantastic …Carrier’s tale is brought to the stage by writers Jonathan Monro and Emil Sher, who have fleshed out the story and put it to music while maintaining its simplicity, which is no small feat for a work set in small-town Quebec in the winter of 1946.

The Ottawa Citizen
Lynn Saxberg

The NAC’s staging of the new musical version is nothing short of a festive and incredibly nostalgic celebration of the story, legends, and customs we’ve all come to know so well… A pleasant surprise was the purposeful diversification of the cast. While the book showed only young boys on Carrier’s hockey team, the stage rendition included four girls, as well as two children of colour…The Hockey Sweater at the NAC is an incredibly entertaining and engaging show. 

New Ottawa Critics
Meaghan Brackenbury

Lyricists Emil Sher and Jonathan Monro have taken this small iconic story and blown it up into everything quintessentially Canadian and developed a rare Canadian musical…This singular musical, Canadian through and through, is a full evening of delightful entertainment.

The Ottawa Dance Blog
Susan Hickman

Sher, a dab hand at family-oriented scripts, has come up with a book and lyrics that fill in the details of Carrier’s 1946 world

Jim Burke
Montreal Gazette

Sher, Munro and company have amplified Carrier’s story, but the original intimacy remains.

Patrick Langston
Artsfile