When he was 18, Simon Boudreault got a job with the Salvation Army, sorting all kinds of items collected from all over the place. That unusual experience inspired his play As Is (tel quel), a ferociously uplifting saga of stuff that touches on such fundamental values as assistance and compassion.

The summer he turned 18, Simon Boudreault was working for the Salvation Army, sorting all kinds of stuff collected from all over the place. That experience haunts him to this day, and inspired his play As Is (tel quel), a jumbled pile of things to be sifted through (if only to avoid drowning in junk) and redistributed to others.

Deliberately prosaic, intriguingly surrealistic, the story raises some important questions. Who exactly is the Salvation Army helping? And what does “helping” mean? What are the motives (admirable or otherwise) that prompt us to lend a helping hand? Set in the dimly-lit basement of a charitable organization, Boudreault’s play speaks not only for his central characters—Saturnin, Suzanne, Diane, Richard and the charity’s director—but for those who are marginalized by our consumer society. Uncompromising and razor-sharp, the play delivers a trenchant critique overlaid on a quick anthropological sketch of our unequal world.

Seven veteran performers, directed by the playwright himself, bring this epic rummage sale to life, trudging resolutely through Richard Lacroix’s impressive set, which astounded Montreal audiences at the show’s spring 2014 premiere: a mountain of stuff piled ceiling-high and spilling into the seats and aisles of the theatre.