‘The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale’ at Soulpepper is as good as its title and just as charming

The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale

By Haley McGee, directed by Mitchell Cushman, lighting by Lucy Adams, sound and music by Kieran Lucas. Until Nov. 6 at Soulpepper Theatre, 50 Tank House Lane, Toronto. [email protected] and 416-866-8668 or 1-888-898-1188.

When you start with a title like “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale,” where do you go from there?

Well, logically, you call up former flames for an interview. You link up with director Mitchell Cushman — a wise choice. You arrange eight objects of varying value on a bright green slice of turf, evoking feelings of suburban melancholy and memories of homemade price tags. You ask your audience to bid on your worn-out belongings: a typewriter; a mix tape; a T-shirt; a necklace; a jewelry box; a bicycle; a ukulele; and a backpack. You infiltrate the crowd as they appraise the storied junk.

And then the real fun begins.

It’s no secret that actor, author and ex-boyfriend-haver Haley McGee is a vibrant and richly talented marvel — this Soulpepper/Outside the March production of “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale” is a reprise, back in Toronto for the first time since 2019. Since her last go of auctioning off ex-boyfriends’ gifts, McGee’s star has only continued to rise. Her memoir, released earlier this year, has achieved great success both in Canada and abroad. And this summer McGee had a historic run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she earned herself a coveted Fringe First Award for her new solo show, “Age Is A Feeling.”

“The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale” is about creating “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale,” and as such it’s all kinds of meta and self-referential. When McGee first embarked on the project, she was in considerable debt, living in the UK and considering sex work as a means to end her increasingly high-interest feud with Visa. Hey, if she was some rich dude’s exact type, one night’s work could earn her somewhere in the ballpark of $10,000, right?

McGee soon dropped that idea and instead looked to selling her belongings — a small collection of trinkets off-loaded to her by former lovers. But how does one put a price on items of emotional value? What if the person who gave it to you later unceremoniously dumped you? What if they cheated on you? What if the sex was only OK? What if a former version of yourself desperately wanted the relationship to work out?

“The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale” is as much an odyssey through the mathematics of sentimentality as it is a peek into McGee’s coming-of-age. McGee collaborated with Melanie Phillips to concoct an equation for the monetary value of her exes’ gifts — a formula for the cost of love, which McGee shares towards the end of the show after a bubble-wrapped, packing-taped breakdown. Theoretically, you in the audience can use the formula, too — I’ll admit I’ve not yet put it to the test.

McGee’s exquisite storytelling is only amplified by Cushman’s knockout direction, which keeps the work’s tone appropriately airy; there’s room for McGee to sigh at latecomers or laugh with us as notebooks snap out of her hands into some mechanism in the stage wall. Cushman’s never shied away from an inventive use of space — this year alone he’s helmed a three-hour, immersive, roving “Sweeney Todd” for Talk Is Free Theatre, plus Factory Theatre’s highly complex “Trojan Girls & The Outhouse of Atreus,” which used one cast to perform two plays at the same time. Here, Cushman’s got the benefit of a performance space designed for theatre, and he’s used it to its fullest potential.

Top-secret envelopes descend upon McGee as if from the heavens, and janitorial closets serve as a canvas upon which McGee can inscribe her genius. McGee and Cushman are a dream team, two masterminds with a penchant for controlled chaos and mess, and they’re both at the top of their game. Kudos too to Lucy Adams’ intricate lighting design and Kieran Lucas’ fittingly quirky sound and music — both ably support McGee, clad in tube socks, a tank top and denim cut-offs, in her quest for financial and romantic clarity.

“The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale” drips with potential for buzz — hell, its media praise (including an old Star review) constitutes a main component of the show — and it’s going to sell out. McGee, now 37, demonstrates a keen understanding of the paradoxical self-doubt and unwieldy optimism that accompanies being a woman in her 20s. Watching her is like hanging out with a cool older sister. The play reads like a survival guide for the inevitability of any number of early adulthood crises, be they economic or interpersonal. I expected to love “The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale” — I did not expect to leave Soulpepper feeling so fiercely seen as a young woman and writer. There’s just no other like Haley McGee: see her before she heads back across the pond.

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