In Theatre Aquarius’ new Tragically Hip jukebox musical, emotion comes first

iPhoto caption: Ali Momen and Talia
Schlanger. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

On its surface, Theatre Aquarius’ upcoming world premiere of It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken is built from the music of the Tragically Hip. In practice, it moves differently. The songs are there, for sure, but they aren’t delivered in the way you’d expect.

“This show isn’t about the Tragically Hip,” director Mary Francis Moore said. “It’s about Waleed.”

Waleed, as it turns out, is an exiled Iraqi journalist, played by Ali Momen, who arrives in Canada expecting his stay to be temporary. He finds himself slowly building a life in a place he doesn’t fully understand, while the life he left behind continues without him.

Throughout the development of the show, Moore, who is also the artistic director of the Hamilton-based Theatre Aquarius, has circled the idea of “having a foot in two countries.” Waleed’s physically in Canada, but his attention is often elsewhere, shaped by news from home, memories, and imagined moments. Scenes grounded in Canada give way to ones unfolding in his mind or in Iraq — not always as literal flashbacks, but as overlapping realities.

*Mary Francis Moore in rehearsal for* It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken. *Photo by Dahlia Katz.*

That divide has shaped how the music functions in the show. “The music is the subconscious of the play,” Moore said. “It’s the landscape that this immigrant and refugee is standing on.” Instead of bending the Hip’s music to fit the narrative, the team has looked for thematic threads and moments where the emotional undercurrent of a song aligns with what’s happening on stage, even if the connection isn’t explicit.

For music director Bob Foster, that approach always felt like the right way in. “The lyrics are very poetic, and it’s actually amazing what you can find in there that does relate to the story,” he said.

That means even the most recognizable songs — what Moore referred to as the “cottage songs,” the tracks that have become a kind of shared Canadian soundtrack — have been reworked to live inside the world of the musical. Foster described the balance as a negotiation, respecting the original music without slipping into imitation. “It’s important not to try and cover the Tragically Hip like a cover band would,” he said, “but to theatricalize it.”

*Bob Foster and Richard Evans in rehearsal for* It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken. *Photo by Dahlia Katz.*

There’s also a musical conversation between styles. Working with music coordinator Levon Ichkhanian, Foster has threaded elements of Arabic music into the score — sometimes during transitions, and sometimes woven into the songs themselves. He underlines the need to find places where those sounds can “seep in” without feeling like a separate layer. The result is more of a coexistence than a fusion, reflecting Waleed’s own divided sense of home.

While the music operates on an emotional logic, the story is grounded in something more concrete. For co-writers Jesse LaVercombe and Ahmed Moneka, creators of the Dora Award-winning King Gilgamesh and the Man of the Wild, the script grew out of both research and lived experience. Moneka, who immigrated to Canada from Iraq over a decade ago, never planned to stay here. “I came here for two weeks,” he said, “and here we are, 11 years later.”

That tension between arrival and permanence runs throughout the musical. “There’s a lot about what it means to be an immigrant,” Moneka said, “‘What are the obstacles you face? How much do you humble yourself? How much do you need to learn and integrate?’”

Good Life roots those questions in a specific context: Kingston, Ontario — the birthplace of the Tragically Hip, and where Thousand Islands Playhouse will present the show this fall — circa 2002. In researching the musical, the writers spent time in the city, speaking with locals and collaborators about what it was like back then. What they heard shocked them. “You could count the number of people of colour on one hand,” Moneka said.

*Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe in rehearsal for* It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken. *Photo by Dahlia Katz.*

It’s that version of the city Waleed enters: a place where he sticks out immediately, and where the aftermath of 9/11 lingers in explicit and unspoken ways. Early on, his focus is survival. He works, he keeps his head down, and never seriously entertains the idea of staying. “He arrives in Canada, and is like, ‘I don’t even want to unpack,’” LaVercombe said. There isn’t one turning point that changes Waleed’s attitude, but there is a gradual shift, built through relationships, routine, and a familiarity with a place that initially feels foreign.

One of the relationships that shapes that shift is with Kate, a local music shop owner played by Talia Schlanger. Their connection anchors the show, but it’s only part of a broader network of people who shape Waleed’s understanding of where he is. “It’s a love story,” Moore said, “but it’s also his relationship with the country, with the people around him, and himself.”

For Moneka, the evolution is deeply familiar. He recounted some of his first encounters in Canada, which oscillated between discomfort and curiosity, and the slow process of finding connection anyway. “You find family, and also a community,” he said. “And then you see something, you understand the people.”

That sense of discovery feeds into what both writers identify as one of the musical’s central ideas: “Somewhere to grow,” Moneka put it, borrowing a line from the song that gives the musical its title.

“We keep coming back to that,” Moore said. “‘Are we giving Waleed somewhere to grow?’” It’s a question the creative team has latched onto and used as a guiding principle, less about resolving the story than tracking what changes over the course of it.

Because the show resists a neat resolution. “The music of the Tragically Hip doesn’t get tied up with a bow,” Moore said. “We’ve also tried not to tie our story up with a bow.”

Instead, Good Life focuses on a single chapter, a period of transition in Waleed’s life where nothing is fully settled, but something has begun to take shape. And for him, there’s no dress rehearsal.

It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken runs at Theatre Aquarius from April 22 to May 24. More information is available here.

Hunter Weaymouth wrote this feature as part of ON Criticism: The 2025/26 Theatre Critics Lab, a collaboration between the Grand Theatre, Talk is Free Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, and Intermission. Hunter is also part of Theatre Aquarius’ box office and front-of-house team.