The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale: Formula has never been so unexpected and delightful

After it ends, what is the value of a romantic relationship? 

What has it cost the people in it? Can a price be put on heartbreak? What about fond reminiscence?

These are just some of the questions posed in Haley McGee’s novel and energetic The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale. 

The current Soulpepper and Outside the March co-production is the first in Toronto since its sold-out run at the 2019 Progress Festival. The show’s setup is deceptively simple. On arriving in the UK, Canadian writer-actor McGee found herself in heavy credit card debt. As she sits on a plinth wearing denim cut-offs, a white tank top and tube socks, she recounts her initial plan to repay that debt by, well, selling herself. She comedically appraises her market value (as a young woman in good shape), until the math smacks up against her self-worth. So she pivots to selling possessions. 

The catch? Her only liquid possessions are gifts that she received while in relationships with previous boyfriends: items like a necklace, a vintage typewriter, a t-shirt, and a bicycle. 

But what is a fair cash price for each item, if it is a metonymic stand-in for a unique relationship which yielded a unique return of laughter, love, learning, validation, growth, pleasure  . . . and so many other elements? Is it possible to appraise items obtained through a relationship and, in the process, better understand the relationship itself? 

Over 100 minutes, McGee’s solo show leans into our algorithm-driven zeitgeist by – literally – constructing an equation that deconstructs relationships and love in order to assign a value to their physical residue.

McGee is a manic marvel recounting her process of market research, ex-boyfriend interviews (some of which make it into the show in hilarious recordings), psychotherapy, and consultation with a physicist who studies how sentimentality affects the economy. Finally, with the help of mathematician Melanie Phillips, McGee undertakes her Quixotic quest to devise a formula that calculates not just the original price minus depreciation, but the “all-in” value of each relationship-infused item in her on-stage yard sale. 

The ardent quest for her mathematical formula is a clever – and profoundly unformulaic – conceit through which to explore her past loves and losses, and the larger question of how we ascribe value to objects, relationships and ourselves. Over the play’s duration, she appraises how falling in and out of love each time has shaped her – with self-reference, self-doubt, self-awareness and resilience all vying for position. 

McGee’s writing is so natural and open that watching her feels as intimate as peering through a half-opened door. In an especially poignant sequence, she reads an excerpt from her teenage diary on discovering that her high-school boyfriend has moved on to date someone new. “I’m not a bad person,” she reads . . . before her teenage self wishes him dead. Her anecdotes are so rawly conveyed that they feel improvised. Whether it’s gut punch moments that broke her heart or eye-rolling reflections on her youthful naivete, or some wry blend of both, they take us deftly into the emotional and psychic depths of her relationships. Her skill in this exercise creates an experiential counterweight that enables us to participate in the whimsy of her quest for this impossibly all-encompassing calculation.  

The disarmingly direct McGee is simply captivating. Knowing this, director Mitchell Cushman keeps her front and center, but sends her pinballing across every inch of the performative space to interact with the inexhaustible features of Anna Reid’s dynamic set – features which support her performance, but never upstage her.  Folders and charts descend from the ceiling. Scrolls and cash-register rolls unfurl. Notebooks snap out of walls.  And the brown-papered back wall serves as a massive manuscript for McGee’s mathematical calculations. 

According to McGee’s calculation, the final appraisal of each yard sale item requires consideration of an X-factor. During the course of the relationship, was there a moment of unspeakable bliss? If so, a special multiplier applies. You should judge for yourself, but it says here that The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale itself – from its unique premise to McGee’s charming, intense performance to its comic-yet-kinda-credible algorithmic magic – delivers such a moment. 

What’s that worth to you?

Reserve tickets to The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale on soulpepper.ca.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022