kya mosey, henricus gielis & taylor olson
“We were fucking born ripped off,” Craig says to his friends Rachel and Jess in Michael Melski’s Joyride, produced by Matchstick Theatre and running at the Neptune Theatre Scotiabank Stage until January 27th. It’s 1994 in Sydney, Nova Scotia and these three young people have inherited a bleak future in a city rapidly losing its industries where they live from meagre paycheque to paycheque with nowhere to go and roadblocks inhibiting all their dreams. Craig, who has just returned to town on probation, is especially restless and desperate to catch a lucky break. The play is a sixty minute high-speed ride through impetuosity, retribution, friendship, and ambition at any cost.
Joyride debuted in 1994 at the Atlantic Fringe Festival and was the play that launched Melski’s esteemed career as a Canadian playwright. It’s easy to imagine the excitement that must have swirled around this play and its playwright when it first premiered. It’s beautifully structured, loaded with tension and the highest of stakes. It’s fast-paced and careens toward the climax and then surprises us with a gut-wrenching ending. The dialogue captures beautifully the rhythms of young people’s speech, and although it is very rooted in its specific time and place, it also has a timelessness to it. Although specific slang words and technology continually evolve, there is still something quite universal about being in your early twenties that isn’t defined by any one generation. The heart of the play is in Rachel’s relationship with Jess, a sweet boy who she has been close friends with since childhood, and how they become mixed up with Craig, who Rachel finds sexier and more interesting, but who also frequently makes her nervous. Melski is adept at capturing the ways Craig and Rachel use manipulation and power just enough to get what they want from the others, but not enough to destroy their intricately woven relationships. Melski also plays with the idea of an unreliable narrator. I found that I didn’t trust Craig’s perceptions of the unseen character Dan, Rachel’s boss who owns the store where she works, but since Dan never appears in the play, Craig and Rachel’s opinions were largely all I had to inform my own, which adds an additional layer of uncomfortable horror as the events of the play unfold. The play is dark, but it’s also laugh out loud funny. Melski gives each of the characters a slightly different sense of humour, and the ways in which they play off one another are often delightful.
Kya Mosey plays Rachel, a vivacious yet pragmatic young lady whose inherent intelligence, sweetness and sense of justice find their way of shining through her tough facade, despite her frequent efforts to shove them away. Henricus Gielis’ Jess wears his heart more on his sleeve. He worries about Rachel and wants to do right by her in all he does, but he also knows that he lives in a place where gentleness is often seen as weakness, and that forces him into facades of his own. Craig, played by Taylor Olson, is angry and deeply hurt by his past, but his genuine affection for Rachel and Jess is apparent as well, even if he expresses it in problematic ways. Through a 2019 lens Craig is a great example of Toxic Masculinity and the play is very much an exploration on how this toxicity affects the people Craig cares about in ways he may not recognize or intend. Mosey, Gielis and Olson each skillfully portray the complexities in their characters and they establish lovely relationships with one another that feel authentic and long lasting.
Jake Planinc directs the play with a great use of space. I especially loved the creativity of the props and set pieces during the scene at the pool hall. He keeps the pacing steady throughout, ensuring that the emotional arcs of each of the characters feel genuine, so by the end the actors’ performances don’t feel forced or at all melodramatic. Wesley Babcock’s set is made up of the pieces of old cars, playing on the imagery of the play’s title and also the numerous references in the play to the freedom a car represents to these characters- the ability to leave Sydney at will. Having the play set amid a sort of junk heap of former cars represents the sad state of their dreams for mobility.
I think there is even more room for crispness and bite in this production. The speed of the dialogue is great and rapid fire, and I wanted that sense of urgency in briskness and staccato to be even more present in the movement, the lighting and sound cues, and the space between the scenes as well. It’s already hurtling towards the end, and I think there’s a little more room to fly
This is an extremely strong production from one of Halifax’s youngest theatre companies. Despite the fact that 2019’s Sydney is (thankfully) not as it was 25 years ago Melski’s Joyride still addresses many of the issues we continue to grapple with as a society today. How can the working class escape the cycles of poverty and despair when the system is obviously rigged against them? This question is as relevant as ever in our current political climate. I’m so excited that Halifax finally has a theatre company whose mandate is, in part, to revive previously produced Canadian plays and I hope they keep finding gems like this one.
Matchstick Theatre’s production of Michael Melski’s Joyride plays at the Neptune Theatre Scotiabank Stage (1593 Argyle Street, Halifax) from January 24th to January 27th. Shows are at 7:30pm Thursday to Sunday and also at 2:00pm on Saturday and Sunday. For tickets please visit this website.
For more information about Matchstick Theatre visit their website. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (@matchstick.theatre).
