Leaving Home: a classic as a vivid slice of life
19 Jun 2025 - Photos by Barry McCluskey

Leaving Home dates from 1971 when Canadians were beginning to discover that they could have a unique theatrical voice. That plays about specifically Canadian topics and characters could become universal. A scholar could tell us where Leaving Home fits into that evolution, but a quick google shows just how important and influential it was in creating a national theatrical identity. Leaving Home is a revered classic, and Matchstick Theatre has given the play a reverential, slick and intense production. Fifty plus years on, the kitchen sink melodrama is familiar, it has been much imitated and is almost a theatrical trope. In 1950s Toronto, a family of Newfoundland transplants—"There are two kinds of people in the world: Newfies and those who wish they were," says the patriarch—gather for dinner before the rehearsal for a shotgun wedding. Family secrets are revealed, old wounds are ripped open, and long simmering battles are fought with awareness of a hard to express underlying love. It could be any family dealing with a stressful event, just with a specific and colourful colloquial voicing and humour.

The tensions in the Mercer family run deep. Tensions between father and sons, tension between the betrothed by virtue of an accident, tension between husband and wife, tension between husband and ex, tension between Catholicism and Protestantism, financial tension, and most of all the unbearable tension of trying to keep up appearances. Playwright David French (Salt-Water Moon) and this production directed by Jake Planinc, keep the proceedings grounded in a solid realism. The Coal Mine Theatre has been configured so the audience rings the playing area, close enough to be almost a member of the family. The dinner and many, many drinks, are served and eaten on a set feels like a well-worn aspiring household from the era. All the interactions, down to the minutest gesture, are realistic and grounded, not only in what we know or are told, but also seemingly in the fabric of the characters. Theatrical yes, but with only the flavour of a particularly vivid slice of life.

We first meet Mary Mercer (Shelley Thompson) who coquettishly admires the dress she has acquired for the wedding. Her joy, her hope, is infectious even though she compares herself to the more well-heeled mother-of-the-bride (and incidentally her husband's former flame) saying, "She'll be decked out like the Queen Mary and me the tug that dragged her in." Mary runs the family and attempts to keep the peace which is difficult as Jacob Mercer (Andrew Musselman) is a loose cannon. Bitter, angry, probably alcoholic, and both ashamed of and fiercely proud of his boys, while also being jealous that they are getting and squandering opportunities he never had. Jacob is an explosion waiting to happen. He rages and flings blame all while struggling to either express or successfully repress his emotional turmoil. There is a sexual heat between Mary and Jacob that is as charming as it is disturbing, she holds her ex, the man who would have given her so much more materially, over his head; he attempts to do the same with his ex Minnie Jackson (Sharleen Kalayil). But Mary knows that the Queen Mary is a façade.

The married couple to be, Bill Mercer (Sam Vigneault) and Kathy Jackson (Abby Weisbrot), are shell-shocked. They know they aren't in love, that this was a tragic fall-out of Kathy's religion's ban on contraception. But even when there is a twist in the plot, in their lives, it is hard to stop what society, and Minnie, have planned for them. The other brother, Ben Mercer (Ben Campbell), is the older, the more sensitive, and the most in conflict with Jacob. He has an escape plan but knows that Jacob will have none of it. Into what is already a maelstrom of melodrama, churns Minnie in all her glory. She is flashy, trashy and more than a little self-centered. Oddly, as she is accompanied by an apparently horse-hung boyfriend, Harold (Sebastien Labelle), Minnie still bears a grudge towards Mary for being the one who married Jacob. French takes the characters, lets them simmer, and then brings them to a boil. It is highly dramatic but suffers from being predictable, these are very Canadian, universal, dramatics that fifty years on, we have seen, and likely experienced, in more incendiary and relentless fashions.

All of the actors deserve to be commended. Not only are they all consistently present and believable, not so easy when under such intimate scrutiny, they all create empathy for their characters. They inhabit the flaws and contradictions without playing to the audience while occasionally signalling that they realize they are playing each other. Musselman is both frightening and pitiful, we understand his pain even if we can't condone how he rages. Thompson is a delight, warm and maternal until she isn't and her carefully constructed, illusionary world starts to fall apart. Being a perpetual peacekeeper takes it toll but she still manages to produce a meal. She snaps at Jacob, "Don't your jaw ever get tired?", but there is still a gleam of love in her eye. Kalayil is a sexy whirlwind, all conniving and very aware of the buttons she is pushing. Her extolling of the virtues of Harold's member are hilarious, ribald when she is aiming for raunchy. Labelle, a dapper cross between Poirot and Chaplin, mines every bit of physical comedy he can and earns well-deserved laughs by being the befuddled observer. The children display the scars of being continually beaten down by the suffering, striving and expectations of their parents. Only Campbell gets to attempt a defence. As an ensemble they breathe life into what could have been a museum piece. French's seminal work becomes the classic it has always been.