A Canadian moment: New play at Theatre Aquarius celebrates this country and The Tragically Hip
It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken, closing out the 2025-2026 season, tells a story of finding home and belonging that is set to songs written by Gord Downie. The show runs April 22 to May 16.
The last show of the Theatre Aquarius season will be an exploration of love, belonging, finding a home, and what it means to be Canadian.
And it will be set to a beloved soundtrack for many in this country: the music of The Tragically Hip. The premiere of It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken takes the stage April 22 and will run to May 16.
It’s a Good Life is not a memoir of the band. In fact, when show co-producer Michael Rubinoff secured the rights to The Tragically Hip catalogue for the purposes of a musical, the band was clear: they did not want the show to be about them.
So this is not a Tragically Hip story. It’s a story powered by The Hip.
This production follows in the tradition of We Will Rock You, American Idiot, Jagged Little Pill and Jim Steinman's Bat Out of Hell: The Musical in being original stories using existing music of an artist as the basis of its score.
Writers Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe have crafted the story of a young Iraqi journalist, Waleed, who has to flee his country in the early 2000s. He comes to Canada, settles in small-town Ontario and builds a new life, and discovers the spirit of his adopted home, while feeling the pull of his homeland.
The heart of the story is the love Waleed finds with Kate.
“She finds something that's really unique in him, and he found something really unique in her,” says Moneka, who immigrated to Canada from Iraq himself. “And we have this beautiful love story, but also the community around them and how he's finding home and somewhere to grow.”
LaVercombe, who hails from Minnesota met Moneka when they were both newcomers to Canada about a decade ago, says the timing of this show is ideal.
“We are in this moment of appreciation of what Canada brings to the world,” he says. “We're very excited about telling a story that celebrates what the country is from an outsider's perspective, while also championing the insider, and bringing those two things together.”
It will be a warm and patriotic show, he says.
“That word has a tense meaning sometimes but we really love it here, and feel like we are citizens here and have investments here, the way the people who are born here do.”
The actions of ICE agents and the ongoing protests by citizens in his home state are part of their conversations and making their way into the show, just as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s stirring speech in Davos is informing their thinking.
“This should feel like a celebration of Canada at this moment … without being corny or too nationalistic. We have no interest in that, but also the celebration is very true and real for us.”
The show is funny and heartfelt, says Aquarius artistic director Mary Francis Moore, who is directing.
“I feel like the story is so specifically universal that if you are a diehard Hip fan, you are going to love this show. If you could not come up with a lyric to save your life, you're going to love this show because the actors we have are incredible, the designers we have are incredible … it really will be a beautiful show,” she says.
Besides Moore and Rubinoff, the originating producer and creative visionary of the runaway hit Come From Away, there are other musical theatre heavy-hitters behind this show.
Composer and arranger Bob Foster, who has dozens of theatre credits, is music director. And choreographer Marc Kimelman, whose Broadway work includes Jagged Little Pill and Jesus Christ Superstar, is on board here, too.
The show, produced in conjunction with Thousand Islands Playhouse, will feature a seven-piece live band, a standard rock-band set-up, but adding violin and cello. It’s a challenge to work existing music into a musical, says Foster. Usually, music is written for a musical and the lyrics advance the story. With this show, the music weaves in and out of the narrative.
“It’s a really beautiful coming-to-Canada story and the poetry, the lyrics of the Tragically Hip are so gorgeous. And then with Bob's orchestrations, it adds so much,” says Moore.
There is pressure in taking this iconic music and moving it in a new direction, says Foster, but he embraces it.
“These songs are written to be great songs. You know, whether it's ‘Courage’ or ‘New Orleans is Sinking’ or ‘Blow at High Dough,’ it's stuff that people really know. I think sung by different voices than you're used to hearing, it’s going to put that in a whole new perspective.”
The show offers the chance to reconnect to cherished music and see it live in a new way going forward. It’s also a chance to reflect on what is the promise and potential of Canada and what it means to be Canadian during what feels like a monumental time in the evolution of this country.
The seed of the idea for this show came from Rubinoff. He had read an article in the early 2000s about Canadian peacekeepers helping refugees leave the Middle East and playing the Tragically Hip.
“So, The Tragically Hip was the introduction to Canada for a lot of new Canadians,” says Moore. “So it just prompted this idea with Michael about what it is to leave everything you know and come to new land and this is your soundtrack.”
The idea stayed with him and when Rubinoff secured the rights to The Tragically Hip catalogue, he approached Moneka to write a play.
So many people around the table during the play’s workshops were, at one time or another, newcomers to Canada, including Foster, who came from England many years ago but decided that he needed to become a citizen last year. He’s felt at home in Canada for a very long time but threats to our sovereignty cemented Foster’s desire to get citizenship, he says.
“We’ve all had our Canada moment, whether it’s ourselves or our families,” says Moore.
The show is funny and heartfelt, and it’s personal and universal, says Moore.
Moore says she’s been amazed by the working partnership of Moneka and LaVercombe. She was immediately taken by their previous collaboration, King Gilgamesh (And the Man of the Wild). The Dora Award-winning production weaves together the hero of an ancient epic poem with a modern Toronto bromance between an American Jew and Iraqi Muslim. The score was performed by Moneka’s JUNO-nominated six-piece Arabic jazz band.
“It was so beautiful and it was so simple in its storytelling,” she says. “The combination of the storytelling and the music and the movement was so exciting to me, and it was unlike anything I'd seen in a long time.”
The two writers have a contagious electric energy together and write in such a unified voice, says Moore.
The two playwrights say they are surprised by the success of Gilgamesh. They set out to make “scrappy weird theatre,” and didn’t expect to land much of an audience. But Moneka’s JUNO nomination drew attention to the score and now their agent is working on touring models for the show.
Moore had her eye on It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken from the outset and advocated to have an early workshop held at Theatre Aquarius so she could take a good look. At a showcase in Toronto later that year for a select group of artistic directors, theatres and producers, she immediately raised her hand.
“It is a risk, because these things cost a lot of money, and it's a big investment, but I was, I think, one of the first theatres to say that I’d take that leap of faith.”
Theatre Aquarius audiences have made clear they like new musicals and smart musicals, says Moore, and Hamilton is a music town. She anticipates the show will bring in Hip fans from a wide radius who wouldn’t otherwise come to the theatre. And maybe they can be made into musical theatre fans through this show.
The Tragically Hip, along with their management and record label, are actively involved in the show’s development. Hip frontman Gord Downie died of brain cancer in 2017, but the surviving members of the band, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair and Davis Manning, have attended the show’s workshops.
“It says a lot about them that they never wanted the show to be about them,” says Moore. And they’ve been supportive of seeing their music taken in a new direction.
The band’s fans will see the music has been honoured and respected, says Foster.
“Just because you're reimagining music doesn't mean you're forgetting where it came from. Proper reimagining appreciates where it came from and opens up other possibilities.”
The creative team on It’s a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken immediately clicked and workshops have been an “explosion of energy,” says Moore.
“I think it would be very easy to do kind of a rah rah Canada play, like a jukebox musical, best of kind of thing, but I think what Ahmed and Jesse and Bob are doing, and Mark and I are supporting is we're weaving some really important narrative and some really important humanity through these lyrics.”
Foster’s reimagining of the songs for musical theatre is magical, says Moore. They are still very much Hip songs, but they deliver the emotions of the show in “beautiful and illuminated” ways.
Ultimately, all the elements of the production have to serve to advance the story. Moore, says Foster, is gifted at asking the hard questions: What are we trying to say here? What does it need to feel like here?
Her job, as dramaturg and then director, is to make sure the story delivers in every way possible, and sometimes that is a messy, chaotic process. But if that mess and chaos is embraced, the best ideas and way forward always emerge, they say.
Moore’s guidance, ultimately, “gives everyone a chance to be great,” says Foster.
The cast of the show includes people with Broadway experience and those who are new to musical theatre but are established musicians. The show requires a sort of rock ‘n’ roll grittiness that isn’t too common in musical theatre.
The reality of building a new show is that everything – from the script to the score to assembling the characters – is in flux until it’s locked down. How actors deliver dialogue can take things in unexpected directions.
“It’s really a beautiful experiment as we find our choices as actors, director, writer, choreographer and arranger,” says Moneka.
It’s an interesting balance, telling a compelling story but thinking about when key songs best fit. Are there hits that need to be left out in favour of a lesser-known song that better fits the narrative?
“We knew from the very beginning there's a set of songs that people show up to hear. We want to deliver on that to people. People spend a lot of money on these tickets, and this type of show may attract people who wouldn't normally come to see a play or musical. They are coming because of The Hip,” says LaVercombe.
“So we want to give those people the full fun singalong experience that they deserve and they expect and that they want from this show that celebrates this band. And then there's also a conversation about: what about these B sides?”
Everyone on the team has songs they are championing. So some tunes have been moved in and out and shuffled to different points of the show.
They are conscious of delivering a show that entertains both someone who knows nothing about The Hip, all the way to the most dedicated fan. Inevitably, whenever they tell someone they are working on this show, the person shares their connection to The Hip, and the huge absence of Gord Downie.
There is undeniable weight to working with the music of a legendary band so tied to Canada’s identity, says Moneka.
“It’s so beautiful as a fresh new Canadian to dig and to learn and to research. We spent time in Kingston searching about the band. We’ve had really nice conversations with the band members, and they are so humble, like the energy of Canada, it's contagious, and we are learning from it as well.”
They have immersed themselves in the lyrics of Gord Downie, read everything they can, watched concert videos, studied the documentary series The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal.
Downie was always forward-looking, always pushing to do better and be better, even when it was clear he wouldn’t see that future, says LaVercombe. That is an inspiration.
Moneka became emotional in a workshop because it was Downie’s birthday, Feb. 6. Had he lived, he would be 62.
“We are channeling Gordon, his wisdom and his love,” he says. “Channeling their songs to empower our story, which is a Canadian story.”
