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Can Jack and Veronyka ever get ahead? In this all-too-relatable love story in a city suffocating under late-stage capitalism, a young couple is pitted against odd after odd in a way that isn’t about testing one’s character anymore—it’s simply reality.
Jack, a second-generation Chinese Canadian cab driver meets Veronyka, an undocumented factory worker and waitress from Moldova, as he’s bringing her from one job to the other. Their
chance encounter blooms into an unlikely romance, stolen in moments between shifts, and then a hasty marriage, which solves migration issues but brings the pair even deeper into the challenges of providing for themselves and their families. The painful death of both of Jack’s parents and the sense of helplessness that has dogged both of their families leads Jack and Veronkya to desperate measures to escape. Some hard work mixed with some political blackmail brings them to a new life, but at what cost?
“This play isn’t about Jack and Veronyka: their love story is the bait—well, let’s call it an invitation—for audiences to consider how it is that systems consistently fail decent people.” —Karen Fricker, Toronto Star
“[A] powerful political parable.” —Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine
“A punch to the gut: very real and very much told with eyes wide open . . . It moved me and kept me thinking, long after curtain call.” —Isabella O’Brien, Mooney on Theatre
“The Jungle is a boldly political new play, argumentative and direct and a bit radical. It is also a touchingly honest drama, brimming with humor and pathos.” —Louis Train, BroadwayWorld
Anthony MacMahon is a Canadian playwright currently working in Toronto. His works include Animal Farm, The Voyager Concert, The Dead (Soulpepper), Trompe la Mort, and Wild Dogs
on the Moscow Trains (SummerWorks). He was until recently a planning advisor to former city councillor Joe Cressy and is currently a project lead at the City of Toronto in Solid Waste Management. He’s honoured to be an alumni of the Soulpepper Academy, Concordia University, and the University of Saskatchewan.
Thomas McKechnie is a Toronto-based playwright and union organizer. They were a part of the 2013–2015 Soulpepper Academy as a writer. Writing credits include The Jungle (Tarragon Theatre, co-written with Anthony MacMahon), 12 Letters from Your Lover, Lost at Sea (with Hannah Kaya), Worm Moon (the Theatre Centre’s Residency Program), 4 1/2 (ig)noble truths (zeitpunktheatre/Why Not Theatre, presented in Toronto, Victoria, Vancouver and more), and Remembering the Winnipeg General (ziepunktheatre). They are a union organizer and a founding member of Artists for Climate and Migrant Justice and Indigenous Sovereignty.