King Gilgamesh & the Man of the Wild – Review of 2025 Tria Theatre Production

The title King Gilgamesh & The Man of the Wild should lead you to believe that you will see a play or musical based on The Epic of Gilgamesh. the oldest written story in the world. You won’t. You will get a story about the friendship of Jesse, a Jew from Minnesota who lives in Toronto and Ahmed, an Iraqi refugee who just got permanent residence in Canada.
The musical comes to life in the last ten minutes. The six musicians of the band play a lively piece of music and the two friends introduce the players as the audience joins in the energy and fun on stage. Unfortunately, the other eighty minutes of the show are not as successful. There are flashes of humour, energetic running around the stage and maybe even dancing but the stories about the friends today take over the show and Gilgamesh and The Man of the Wild are mentioned and at times uncomfortably superimposed on the plot about Jesse and Ahmed.
The musical is written by Jesse LaVercombe, Ahmed Moneka (who play themselves) and Seth Buckley who also directs the production. The six musicians are on stage throughout and Ahmed sings and Jesse plays the piano. The latter came to Toronto with his Canadian wife and stayed here after his divorce because of Canada’s health insurance. Jesse is an aspiring actor and he has a part as a bomber pilot in the American Air Force in a movie about the bombing of Iraq. The part falls through because he is too short and he is stuck in Toronto.
Ahmed was a successful entertainer in Iraq but he was forced out of his country because he wrote a story about gays. Hiis family went into exile and ended up in Turkey. He wants to have a child and an important part of the play is the difficult birth of his daughter after forty hours of the mother being in labor.
King Gilgamesh and Enkidu the Wild Man, as I said, do enter the narrative. Ahmed plays Gilgamesh who is two-thirds god and one-third man. Enkidu loses his wildness when he experiences sexual pleasure. But Gilgamesh spurns the advances of Ishtar, the goddess of sex and death But the real fun lies in the description of the first sexual experiences of Jesse who tries to put on a condom but blows his biscuit before he can have sex with his high school sweetheart. Ahmed is more successful and he is at it for six hours. The two friends eat a magic mushroom, get very high and perform hijinks in that state.
There is racy language, physical energy and music. The musical opens with Ahmed singing a ballad in Arabic. Beautiful but what is he saying? There are other examples of using Arabic which I found annoying.
I will name all the musicians who formed an international band but there were not enough songs or musical numbers for us to get a taste of their obviously high talents. They are Dimitris Petsalakis (Music Director who plays oud and keyboard), Waleed Abdulhamid (bass), Jessica Deutsch (violin), Selcuk Suna (clarinet), Max Senitt (drums and percussion), as well as Raha Javanfar (violin alternate and Roberto Riveron (bass alternate).
The protagonists wore modern street clothes. Jesse wore a Blue Jays T-shirt and Ahmed wore a baseball hat backwards. The set by designer Lorenzo Savoini had a large table and chairs in the center of the stage with a piano on the side.
The blurb in the program by the authors states that “The Epic of Gilgamesh, is about an unlikely and epic friendship between two men. A king and a beast-man find meaning in life by finding each other and teach each other about strength and vulnerability.” The juxtaposition of the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu and that of Jesse and Ahmed struck me as artificial and forced. The fascinating and well-fitting narrative of the the two modern friends together with the music has enough material for a fine production even if the gods and goddesses provided some humour.
King Gilgamesh & the Man of the Wild by Jesse LaVercombe, Seth Buckley and Ahmed Moneka in a production by Tria Theatre and Soulpepper continues until October 5, 2025, at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario.
www.soulpepper.ca

The cast of King Gilgamesh. Photo; Dahlia Katz

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