Truth Sets 'The Drawer Boy' Free

"The Drawer Boy"

Written by Michael Healey, directed by John Tillinger, set design by James Noone, costume design by Laurie Churba, lighting design by Kevin Adams, composition/sound design by Scott Killian

Cast in order of appearance:

Angus, Michael Countryman

Miles, Carson Elrod

Morgan, John Bedford Lloyd

Is ignorance bliss?

That's one of the penetrating questions delicately posed but never completed answered by Canadian playwright Michael Healey's simple yet elegant comedy-drama, "The Drawer Boy," which just finished a successful run at the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, CT. When a young actor named Miles arrives at the central Ontario farm of lifelong friends and WWII veterans Angus and Morgan in the summer of 1972, his enthusiastic research for a play his theater troupe is writing inadvertently triggers the recovery of lost memories and buried secrets that may have been best left undisturbed.

A desire to learn first hand about the plight of Canada's farmers brings the naïve Miles to Angus and Morgan's doorstep. There he discovers that the seemingly simple Angus lives every day - in fact, every moment - as if he were experiencing it for the first time. Morgan explains that Angus' short-term memory was destroyed when he suffered a brain injury during a London air raid. Not only can't he remember Miles' name despite repeated introductions: he can't remember meeting him from one conversation to the next.

For 30 years, therefore, Morgan has been Angus' caretaker of sorts, although the relationship is far from being one sided. Angus cooks, cleans, and willingly does whatever task Morgan assigns, including making him sandwiches and pouring him the Canadian equivalent of Kool-Aid on demand. Angus also miraculously takes care of the duo's finances. It seems that his genius for solving mathematical problems was unimpaired by the head trauma, and his savant-like calculations enable the two men to hang onto their farm despite marginal profits and paltry government subsidies.

One evening Miles overhears Morgan telling Angus what sounds like a bedtime story only to discover that it is actually their history together. When Miles incorporates the details of this tale into his group's play and invites the men to a rehearsal, Angus suddenly starts to remember his past independently - but his blurred memories don't quite jive with the story Morgan has been telling him night after night, year after year.

Michael Countryman as Angus, John Bedford Lloyd as Morgan, and Carson Elrod as Miles navigate the gentle yet powerful plot twists and emotional shifts of "The Drawer Boy" with humor, understatement, and graceful ease. Countryman evokes sympathy not only as the innocent with no capacity for remembering the past or mapping his future but also as the man/child who is wrenched out of his simple existence and forced to grapple with the memories of a painful loss and his friend's well-meaning but also self-serving betrayal. As Morgan, Lloyd is just the right combination of crusty caretaker and cautious controller. He is also comically cantankerous when duping the city slicker actor into carrying out absurd barnyard chores, ostensibly to help the young man learn about rural life by the "method," but in reality to entertain himself and to keep the curious interloper from getting too close to Angus. Carson Elrod as Miles is a bubbly and endearing hoot. He gives us all the exaggerated foibles of an eager and inexperienced actor without turning him into a stereotype, then later reveals genuine interest in and compassion for his research subjects once his enthusiasm for learning the truth sparks bittersweet consequences.

James Noone's slatted and rustic farmhouse and Kevin Adams' evocative lighting create an atmosphere of necessary austerity that is still somehow warm and inviting. Laurie Churba's costumes are simple yet apt, evoking the post Vietnam War era without falling into parody.

"The Drawer Boy" wraps the power of theater within the power of theater. Just as Miles' staged reenactment of Angus and Morgan's well-crafted fable stirs the central characters to face, accept responsibility for, and ultimately be set free by harsh realities, "The Drawer Boy" moves the audience to sympathy and enlightenment. Ignorance may be a double-edge sword, but so, we find out, is truth.

Next Up: "Constant Star," July 13-30, Westport Country Playhouse, Westport, CT

Box Office: 203-227-4177 or 888-927-7529

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