Born in Accra, Ghana, M'Carthy moved to Canada at the age of 14, living first in Merritt, British Columbia and later in Scarborough, Ontario.[1] He studied theatre at York University,[1] writing his first play The Kente Cloth and staging it at Toronto's SummerWorks festival during this time.[1] Obaaberima had its roots in a poem that he submitted to the Young Creators Unit at Buddies in Bad Times theatre.[1] The play premiered at Buddies in September 2012, under the direction of Evalyn Parry.[2]
He garnered two Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations for Obaaberima in 2013, for both Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Principal Role – Play, amid five other nominations for the play.[3] The show won three other Dora Awards, including Outstanding Production of a Play.[4]
In 2014, his plays Blue Bird, cowritten with Brad Cook, and Black Boys with Saga Collectif premiered as workshop productions.[5]
He has also acted in other plays, including productions of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, Kwame Stephens' Man 2 Man, Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead, D. D. Kugler and William Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth, and in Maxime Desmons' short film Au plus proche.
He was part of the 2014–2015 English Theatre Ensemble at the National Arts Centre,[5] and has also worked with Toronto's Tarragon Theatre and Obsidian Theatre companies.[5]
In 2016, he was cocreator with Thomas Antony Olajide and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff of Black Boys, a theatrical show about Black Canadian LGBTQ identities which premiered at Buddies in Bad Times[6] before undertaking a national tour.[7] Olajide, M'carthy and Jackman-Torkoff were collectively nominated for Outstanding Ensemble Performance at the Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 2017.[8]
In 2018, he performed a revival of Obaaberima at Buddies in Bad Times.[9]
In June 2020, M'carthy performed an excerpt from Obaaberima as part of the Buddies in Bad Times Queer Pride Inside special for CBC Gem.[10] In 2021, he performed on FreeUp! The Emancipation Day Special.[11]