About the Play:

Finalist for the 1997 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

High Life is a full-length dark comedy by Lee MacDougall. Four addicts – three ex-convicts and a young recruit – plan to pull off the ultimate bank heist. High Life has been called "the 'Reservoir Dogs' of Canadian theatre." In it, the most unlikely bunch of masterminds unite for one last big "score", one that will keep them flying on drugs, if only they don't kill each other first – or die laughing.

High Life tells the story of four heroin addicts who, at the dawn of the age of the ATM (circa 1989), hatch a plan to rob one with dangerous, gripping and hilarious results. A wildly comic and very dark adventure, High Life starts with Dick, a very wily and seasoned ex-convict, who gathers together a team of old friends and prison buddies: Donnie, the sickly criminal genius, and Bug, the violent enforcer, and one new-comer, Billy, the amoral lady's man; in order to bring off a daring and very flawed plan: to rob a bank by using an out-of-order ATM as bait. And of course it all goes wrong. High Life is a shocking portrait of addiction and criminal life.

High Life premiered in 1996 at Harbourfront Centre during the World Stage Festival in Toronto and was critically acclaimed. It won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play, was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award, and a Chalmers Canadian Play Award. It has since been produced across Canada, and internationally in New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo and Seoul. In 2012, the Soulpepper Theatre Company mounted a revival of High Life, the first production in Toronto in 15 years.

Cast: 4 men

What people say:

"…remarkably tight and assured… walking a knife edge between humour and horror." — The Globe and Mail

"High Life – a funny, tense, violent play about four morphine addicts planning a bank robbery – is an awfully good evening of theatre ... It's a sharp and caustic play that tautly mixes hilarity with an ever-present sense of danger... High Life is reminiscent of some of David Mamet's scripts, such as American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross." — The Spectator (Hamilton)

"With its slew of witty one-liners, mostly at the men's expense, it's a perfectly enjoyable and sometimes extremely funny evening." — The Guardian (UK)

About the Playwright:

Lee MacDougall is a Canadian actor, writer and theatre director. He has performed in theatres all across Canada, as well as having guest roles in film and television. His first play, High Life, is based on a group of drug addicts he met while acting in a regional theatre production.