High Life

David E. Kemp is a drama professor at Queen’s University and the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

This play by actor Lee MacDougall is a black comedy that walks a
tightrope between humor and horror. Four addicts—three ex-convicts and
a young recruit—are planning the ultimate bank heist. Masterminding
the crime is the charismatic Dick, a seasoned con who knows the ropes.
His assembled team consists of Bug, a menacing and unpredictable
psychotic; Donnie, a nervous hypochondriac; and Billy, a youngster who
will do anything for a fix. The quartet’s fantasy of making one last
big score that will keep them high on morphine is rendered poignant by
the audience’s presentiment that things will go terribly wrong for
MacDougall’s realistically drawn characters. The play’s generous
doses of violence and obscene language are never gratuitous. That High
Life is a brilliantly theatrical work is hardly surprising, given the
author’s background as a working actor.