Truck: rolling down the infinite highway of progress, or, when its lean people get desperate
28 Mar 2025 - Production photo by Eden Graham

Nathan, followed closely by Alan, burst into the spotlight and rally the audience in a chant of "No trucking without truckers." It's a clever gambit as we are instantly on board with the strikers. During the rest of Truck, our alliances will not shift, but they will be tested, prodded and finally shattered. Playwright and director Graham Isador (Short Sighted, White Heat, Situational Anarchy) has created a cri de coeur for humanity vs technology that is filled with twists and passion. The truckers are striking for basic advancements — sick pay, better wages, safety — while unbeknownst they are about to be replaced by automated long distance hauling trucks. The Edison corporation who have developed the automated trucks are represented by Jamie (Ellie Moon) who insists on using the word "drone" instead of "robot." Moon underlines that insistence with a deliberate, robotic-like, physicality that accentuates her basic lack of a soul. She is very funny and flat out terrifying. She has some dubious factoids about why the replacement is a necessity, but freely admits it all has to do with profits.

The truckers are represented by a spitfire Tim Walker (White Heat, Bone Cage, Rock) as Nathan, and Craig Lauzon (An Unsafe Space, Orlando) as his sidekick and everyman representative Alan. They are, as Jamie succinctly puts it, "kind of handsome in an I don't know how to look after myself way." Truckers in flannel and baseball caps. They are also impassioned, this is their livelihood, their identity. Nathan is determined to fight, Alan is faced with an impossible conundrum, an offer he can't refuse but can't in good conscience take. He says, "You try to have morals but if no-one else does, you look like an idiot." Jamie counters that he should be "on the right side of history. Or the winner's side at least. Everyone loves a winner." The dialogue is rapid fire and at one remarkable point all three monologue simultaneously, a chorus of crossed intentions. Isador is showing us just how difficult and futile a debate this is. When Alan has to deliver a retirement speech, he googles 'how to write a retirement speech." Automation is already everywhere.

The set is sparse as is the soundscape performed live by Ron Kelly (Situational Anarchy), the emphasis is on the words and ideas. And all three actors are more than up to delivering. At first the finale, a tour de force for Lauzon, feels forced as Alan struggles to express himself and Isador's concluding point is not persuasive enough to be convincing, veering uncomfortably close to cringe and pity. It is always dangerous to put a big monologue in the mouth of a character who is inarticulate. But it pulls together, just in an unexpected way. Instead of a catharsis we are given bleakness, the everyman is us, struggling not to surrender to what feels inevitable. Not to be redundant. The lights blink to black and we are alone with our thoughts and fears. Alan traces the trajectory of his career and we wince in recognition. It is in the promotional material so it isn't a spoiler that Truck is set in 2032, yet when the date is first mentioned, well past halfway through the play, it is a jolt. Truck feels so brutally contemporary that the future is already here. We are already on Edison's "infinite highway of progress" but it isn't as romantic outlaw truckers, we are well on our way to being lean and desperate.