For Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, their new musical It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken exists at a nexus: between exile and belonging, between 24 years ago and the present day, and between their original story and the beloved music of The Tragically Hip.
On stage at Theatre Aquarius under the direction of Mary Francis Moore, the world-premiere musical arrives with significant anticipation and curiosity. The story is set in Kingston, where the Hip were born. It follows Waleed (Ali Momen), an outspoken Iraqi journalist who is rebuilding his life in Canada after being forced into exile. We’re back in the year 2002, the fraught year after 9-11, which is when the Hip released their 8th album In Violet Light, including the haunting track which gives the musical its title.
Amidst Waleed’s struggles to find employment and lodging, he meets Kate (Talia Schlanger), a record store owner, and the two form an unexpected connection. (Note: in her store, you’ll find Rush stickers and albums, but none by the Hip.) Around Waleed and Kate, a diverse and eclectic community congregates, including his pot-smoking student roommate Lucas (Kevin McLachlan); Kate’s laconic musician brother Jonathan (Brandon McGibbon), and Didi (Tahirih Vejdani) the coffee shop owner and relationship nexus, as Waleed’s employer, Kate’s best friend, and Jonathan’s former partner.
So it’s not the story of The Tragically Hip: it’s Waleed and Kate’s story, narrated by the charismatic Sam (Karim Butt), and manifested on stage via the emotional and musical landscape of The Tragically Hip’s expansive song catalogue.
The musical: origins and aspirations
Moneka and LaVercombe last worked together on King Gilgamesh & the Man of the Wild — a five-Dora-nominated, Outstanding-Sound-and-Music-winning piece that mined their own friendship through the lens of the oldest epic story in the world. This is their second collaboration about exile, music, and the people who pull each other through it.
In Moneka’s words, the project started with “an idea from Michael Rubinoff”, the originating producer of that other famously Canadian ensemble musical about foreigners meeting locals at a moment of rupture: Come From Away. “His dream was to use this catalog of amazing music of The Tragically Hip with an immigrant story.” It’s an evocative—and maybe even an implausible—premise, given that The Hip are the most quintessentially Canadian band. Canadians loved them more fiercely than any other, but our (one-time) friends south of the border never took to them. This lack of commercial success stung our Canadian inferiority complexes for a long time… at least until we re-framed it as a source of pride and a sign of our superior taste.
Moneka and LaVercombe took as their starting point this combination of fiercely Canadian music and a non-Canadian protagonist. They began building outward, drawing from their own lived experiences of arrival and adaptation. “Jesse came from America. I came from Iraq,” notes Moneka. “We came here in our early 20s… professionally, we started working here in Canada. A lot of things intertwined from my life with Jesse’s life, and we applied them to the protagonist Waleed.”
The result is a work that resists easy categorization. While it is, structurally, a jukebox musical, both writers view it as something more expansive. LaVercombe describes the decision to centre an immigrant protagonist as transformational: “It allows us to really to arrive: not just to the music, but to the place where it’s set: to Canada and to Kingston, Ontario, with a set of fresh eyes.” This makes it “easier to mythologize, and to put story onto it in some ways, because it’s from the viewpoint of this new person”. And because the “music is woven in with the place Waleed is discovering,” it feels like “more of a discovery, as opposed to a celebration—which I think can be a little bit cheesier”.
So rather than relying on nostalgia or familiarity, the show leans into discovery—of place, of self, and of the emotional terrain embedded in the songs. And this approach opens the work outward. While the show and the music are deeply Canadian in their references, they are not limited by them. As LaVercombe notes, this approach “allows us to actually talk about finding home in the broadest of senses… Any time someone leaves their home, there’s a dislocation. And then there’s a finding of new friends, a finding of yourself, a personal change that you go through. We think that all these themes are going to be really accessible… and hopefully allow the piece to travel beyond the borders of Canada.”
The music may not have travelled so far in the lifetime of the band, but for Moneka, “the universality of the lyrics of the Hip” makes this feel like an inevitability. These songs are “not only about love, in a romantic way”. They’re “about depression, about identity, about existing, about resilience.” These thematic threads become the connective tissue between Waleed’s journey and the band’s catalogue, allowing the songs to function not as an adornment but as the show’s emotional architecture. The proof of concept lies in what Hip-loving audiences have been telling the creators: “We came for the music, but we’re getting really taken by the story at the same time.”
And the sonic diversity of the music itself is a major plus. LaVercombe notes how with many jukebox musicals, “it all kind of sounds like you’re listening to one album.” But with the Hip, “song after song actually sounds very different.” The duo play to the fans by mining the Hip’s hit-laden pre-2002 catalogue most heavily. But as they assembled the show, they were blown away by how “even inside their earliest songs, there’s such a big range between songs like Bobcaygeon, Wheat Kings, New Orleans is Sinking, Blow at High Dough, Fireworks, and At the Hundredth Meridian.”
This “became a great gift, because there’s such emotional range in the music that it really lent itself to adaptation.” LaVercombe bottom lines it simply: “These are amazing songwriters. And so as far as contemporary musical theatre goes, the music is really strong—even put up against all the great musical theatre canon.”
The creators themselves: from bromance to romance
If the musical marks a new chapter for Moneka and LaVercombe as collaborators, it also builds on an established creative rapport. Their previous work, King Gilgamesh, explored friendship, and here, they turn to romance. Yet the shift is less dramatic than it might seem. LaVercombe smiles, “I don’t know how different a bromance and a romance really are. In the romance, there ends up being a kiss. Even in Gilgamesh, we have a forehead kiss that really does get pretty, pretty steamy!” What really matters is not the romance per se, but the idea of “people coming together”, whatever the relationship. Sometimes, it’s “two siblings who… have grown apart, who just manage to take that one step towards each other again.” The emotional arc is “about that movement of people coming together, starting from further apart… whether it’s running miles towards each other because they’re so far apart, or just taking a single step towards each other. It’s about the shift.”
That sense of movement extends to the show’s geographical and cultural dualities. “The story is about Kingston, and also it’s about Baghdad,” notes Moneka. One city with “a new, fresh history” and the other with “a very old, deep history” are held in parallel, creating a layered and mirrored sense of place for this story “about two people and their two histories, as well.” In this juxtaposition and connection, It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken finds much of its emotional charge.
The decision to premiere the show in Hamilton before going to Kingston in the fall introduces another city to the mix. This was an easy decision, based on artistic alignment. Moneka credits Theatre Aquarius Artistic Director (and multiple Dora Mavor Moore Award-winner) Mary Francis Moore for “her bravery and curiosity, and also her vision… she’s the first person who jumped on this project.” With a compressed development timeline—“Musicals usually get six, seven years, but we started writing the piece shortly after” King Gilgamesh in 2023 —the institution’s support proved essential in bringing the work to the stage. LaVercombe emphasizes the collective effort that Moore and the entire organization have thrown behind the production: “Everyone is on the same page, firing on all cylinders… I can’t imagine that we’d be able to do what we’re doing without that.”
The experience: our mini-review of the show
It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken is a dynamic show with plenty of appeal for Hip fans and novices alike. Moneka and LaVercombe have fashioned a meaningful, relatable and engrossing romance featuring resonant characters and real thematic depth. And the songs, ahhh the songs! On stage, they are absolute fire. As LaVercombe noted, The Hip were far from a one-trick pony sonically – and the full range of what they created works marvellously well, both musically and emotionally.
The choreography is also strong, lending itself organically to the show’s rock sensibility. Eschewing the song-and-dance form typical of many musicals, choreographer Marc Kimelman opts for a movement vocabulary that evokes communal gatherings, like street parties, house parties or concerts, where friends move their bodies spontaneously and naturally to music while listening to it. In this context, Shaw Festival veteran McLachlan performs eye-catching breakdancing moves that work intrinsically with the music of the scene while showcasing his enormous talent.
That said, in this first staging of the musical, the fusion of elements is not yet seamless. Hip lyricist and Canadian icon Gord Downie’s lyrics are dense and poetic. Whether you know the Hip catalogue (like we do) and don’t (like our son, who joined us at the show), there are a couple of challenges to wrestle down. First, making out those complex lyrics in the sound mix is sometimes not easy. Second—and this compounds the first point—it is sometimes difficult to parse the linkage between a given song and the characters and situations unfolding on stage.
At their best, the songs are razor-sharp in their use, and exquisite in their appropriateness for the moment. “Courage” and “Grace, Too” are fitting, full-cast bookends for the show. And the contemplative, moody title track backstops a split-screen scene of Kingston and Baghdad at the end of the first act which is gorgeous and emotionally devastating: it creates a structural anchor and a moment of convergence, where the narrative and music fully intertwine. As Moneka explains, “This song… has a beautiful poetry that could apply to our protagonists… It’s the peak emotional moment in the piece.” Another great example occurs in the second half after an argument, when Kate sings “Cordelia,”while channeling some of Downie’s physicality.
But where we sometimes get this perfect marriage of the book and the music, at other moments, the linkages feel more tentative—like an early-relationship date. “Bobcaygeon” (with its swelling bridge that gets us every time) is deployed beautifully in the show… except that it’s never made clear before the song is sung that this is the town the characters have travelled to. This small moment of confusion gets in the way of enjoying the beauty on display. Likewise, we got hung up trying to make sense of how Wheat Kings’ story of wrongfully imprisoned David Milgaard fit in. And while we loved the dynamic visualization of “At The Hundredth Meridian” (which is a song about Canadian identity that plays off our differences from America, and speaks to knowing who you are and where you belong—and don’t), we were a little confused watching the characters smoke up and pantomime a buffalo hunt.
We are early in the life cycle of It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, and these are solvable details, which don’t prevent this being a great night at the theatre, or take away from the likeable characters and the compelling story Moneka and LaVercombe have written. Add to that the amazing, beloved Hip catalogue, and a cast and choreography brimming with energy and charisma.
Final thought: a musical made for this moment
The Hamilton production is a rousing proof of concept for this inspired idea of pairing an immigrant story with the music of this almost imperviously Canadian band. And the creators believe it uniquely suits the current cultural context. “We are proud of where we’re from. And we are also both proud Canadians” notes Lavercombe. As immigrants, he and Moneka sense “there is an energy right now in Canada…. in part, because of what’s going on in the States and the world. There’s a real chutzpah. There’s a pride.”
“We’re a part of that, and we’re responding to that.” And because of it, “it feels like the right moment for this show, and the right moment to be celebrating Canada’s past and also looking towards Canada’s future.” The musical, then, is not just a story about belonging. It’s also the expression of a shifting national self-understanding—and an example of how shared cultural experiences can shrink our differences: “There’s so much fracturing in our culture, as people are so siloed in what they listen to and what they watch. The fact is this show is bridging generations. Maybe there’ll be a debate inside the family about whether the original Hip recording of ‘Courage’ is better than the cast album. But they’re all listening to the song and singing along, and it’s amazing to be a part of that.”
And if all of this sounds a bit heavy, don’t worry. For all its ambitions and thematic heft—Moneka and LaVercombe justly describe the show as a “strong”, “brave,” and unapologetic “big swing”—they also stress that It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken is “not self-serious. It’s very funny. It’s goofy!”
In the end, Moneka hopes that this show, at this moment, can have “the impact of a seed that we want to plant inside of people as Canadians.” Of course, “it will be the choice of people to water it. But hopefully, it will become a beautiful flower inside of them, which is acceptance and harmonizing with each other”.
“We are hoping to create that impact inside of our amazing Canadian communities”– and the show is off to a strong start in making that happen in Hamilton.
It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, presented in partnership with Thousand Islands Playhouse and co-produced by The National Arts Centre and its National Creation Fund, continues at Theatre Aquarius through May 24, 2026. Tickets and additional information are available at theatreaquarius.com.
© Arpita Ghosal and Scott Sneddon
