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WEDNESDAY,OCTOBER16,2019| THEGLOBEANDMAILO NEWS | A
T
here are no living, wild ani-
mals in Anthony Mac-
Mahon and Thomas
McKechnie’sThe Jungle, just a
fabulous beast called capitalism.
Get on its wrong side and it will
slowly tear you to pieces. Learn
how to harness it and you could
succeed – although likely at the
expense of others.
By turns darkly comic, semi-
tragic and bitingly cynical, Mac-
Mahon and McKechnie’s engross-
ing new play, premiering in the
Tarragon Theatre’s Extraspace, is
part love story, part economics
lesson. It’s the tale of Jack (Mat-
thew Gin) and Veronyka (Shan-
non Currie), a working-class To-
ronto couple struggling to get by
in the precarious gig economy.
He’s a second-generation Chi-
nese-Canadian who spends 16-
hour shifts at the wheel of a cab.
She’s an illegal immigrant from
Moldova who’s working in a fac-
tory by day and waiting tables in
a downtown pub at night.
The pair fall in love and some-
how, between their brutal sched-
ules, manage to marry and settle
down in his apartment in Etob-
icoke. He’d like kids, but she says
they can’t afford them – she’s al-
ready supporting family back in
Moldova. And his parents, in
Markham, aren’t well-off either,
scraping by on his aging father’s
own cab driving and taking on
debts they can’t pay off.
I say there are no living ani-
mals in this jungle, but there’s
plenty of dead meat. At one
point, Veronyka accidentally
gives Jack and her in-laws food
poisoning with some tainted
poultry she bought for cheap in
Chinatown. And later, she ditches
waitressing to apprentice at a
boutique butcher shop catering
to hipsters in Kensington Market.
The meat theme is a sly reference
to the play’s inspiration, Upton
Sinclair’s 1906 muckraking clas-
sicThe Jungle, a novel that re-
vealed the wretched lives of
working-class immigrants ex-
ploited by Chicago’s meat-packing industry.
Although the grotesque hor-
rors of that book may be a world
away from 21st-century Toronto,
MacMahon and McKechnie sug-
gest that both the ruthless cap-
italism Sinclair exposed and the
socialist solutions he espoused
haven’t lost their currency.
Throughout the play, actors Cur-
rie and Gin slip out of their char-
acters to deliver a lively lecture
on Marxist economics – com-
plete with whiteboard diagrams
on Shannon Lea Doyle’s grungy
apartment-cum-classroom set –
showing how the theories ofDas
Kapitalcontinue to apply to the
present day.
Certainly MacMahon, who did
an unsatisfying update of Or-well’sAnimal Farmfor Soulpep-
per two seasons ago, is much
more successful in making Sin-
clair’s work speak to us today. In
fact, the play eventually leaves
Sinclair and ventures into Orwel-
lian satire. Veronyka, once the
desperate immigrant, later be-
comes the successful small-busi-
ness owner who complains of the
handouts being given to Syrian
refugees. Jack, meanwhile, goes
from a shiny-eyed idealist who
volunteers his time on a local
Liberal campaign to a dirty player
in the political game.
There were times when this
show took me way, way back to
The Noam Chomsky Lectures,a
piece of classic Canadian political
theatre from the 1990s, and it’s
no surprise that one of its au-
thors, Guillermo Verdecchia, is
the director here. He givesThe
Jungle a potent staging that
makes the most of its two win-
ning actors.
Gin is delightful as Jack, who
glows with fresh-faced enthusi-
asm despite all those punishing
taxi shifts. Currie provides the
contrast as a wry, wary Veronyka.
She looks and sounds so convinc-
ingly Eastern European that it’s a
shock when she first reverts to
her own Canadian accent for the
lectures.
McKechnie and MacMahon
aren’t necessarily recommending
Marxist ideology. They remind us
that Veronyka and Jack’s parents
come from countries where
Marx’s theories were twisted into
totalitarianism. And remember,
MacMahon adapted Animal
Farm, that fable about comm-
unism-turned-fascism. But that
doesn’t mean Marx the econo-
mist didn’t get it right.
Whether you agree with them
or not,The Jungle’s frank por-
trayal of today’s working poor
can only serve as a reminder that
a system where 1 per cent of the
world’s population holds the
bulk of the world’s wealth is a
system that’s gone horribly
wrong.The Junglecontinues to Nov. 3.
(tarragontheatre.com)Afrankportrayalof today’sworkingpoor
MacMahonand
McKechnie’slatest
showfollowsaToronto
couplestrugglinginthe
precariousgigeconomy
MARTINMORROW
THEATREREVIEWTheJungle
TARRAGONTHEATREINTORONTO
WrittenbyAnthonyMacMahon
andThomasMcKechnie
DirectedbyGuillermoVerdecchia
StarringShannonCurrie
andMatthewGin
★★★
Insemi-tragicplay
TheJungle,ShannonCurrie,
left,playsVeronyka,an
illegalimmigrantfrom
Moldovawhoworksata
factoryandasawaitress.
Meanwhile,MatthewGin
playsherhusband,Jack,
asecond-generation
Chinese-Canadianwho
drivesacab.
CYLLAVONTIEDEMANN/
TARRAGONTHEATRE