What but guitar music bridges between scenes could be appropriate for a play set in 1972, when an actor in Canada might (and did) drop in on a far northern farm to observe life there to use in a collective theater piece? In just such a manner drifts in Miles, who meets simple-minded Angus and gets his okay to work on the farm in exchange for being put up and experiencing life there. Good thing Miles didn't first come upon Morgan!
Both farm manager and laborer, no-nonsense Morgan has been fast friends with Angus since childhood. In WWII the two soldiered together and returned home with English brides. All were to build a home on a plan drawn by one of the men, where the couples would occupy separate but adjoining halves. Yet for decades since, the men have lived alone at the subsistence-level farm and worn house.
In The Drawer Boy, Angus' main function seems to be baking bread and making sandwiches, though he has a savant's way with mathematics and happily answers requests to count stars or give a brief financial accounting. His head having been seriously injured in the war, his short-term memory makes him continually ask Miles who he is and why he's around. Angus is more congenial toward him than is Morgan, who keeps Miles busy with silly tasks like moving eggs among chickens' nests. Still, who could resist telling of dire consequences due unproductive dairy cows to an actor trying, sound effects and all, to emulate one?
One night, Miles overhears Morgan telling Angus a bittersweet story of their lives, including what happened to their wives and how their friendship has endured. This obvious ritual pleases Angus immensely. As Miles afterward adds references to it in his customary questioning, though, Angus more and more painfully searches his memory. Also the kitchen...for traces of the past.
The turning point comes after Angus witnesses the rehearsal of a play Miles has written, based on the biographical story. Will memory return? Can it be tested by a search for reality? Will Miles' play get confused with another that he acts in and describes to Angus? What happens to his friendship with Morgan? And their lives?
The Drawer Boy offers challenges to actors that all three at the Banyan more than meet. Either hunched or shuffling, carefree or full of pain, congenial or confusedly upset, Kenneth Tigar so absorbs Angus that he is almost unrecognizable from previous company appearances. What a difference between the Angus joyfully receiving his story via Morgan and the agonized searcher for his own, real memories!
As storyteller Morgan, Don Walker delivers what proves to be fictional as if real: art triumphing. His geniality toward and love of Angus contrasts with his exasperation with Miles. Walker manages to make Morgan's somewhat mean orders to the clueless-about-farming young man not reach the level of personal affront. He also rightly doesn't eschew showing guilt about the past, despite a take-charge present manner.
Ken Ferrigni avoids caricaturing Miles by conveying the actor's total devotion to his purpose on the farm. With his near-Afro red hair and sideburns, he's a 1970s model of "method" investigator, sure that his truthful findings will justify whatever he does to ferret them out. Though he's obviously the playwright's "device" to interrupt stasis, draw forth exposition and create the crucial dramatic conflict, Miles also has personality, thanks to Ferrigni. He also hints Miles may not stay quite as know-nothing about the farm as he seems to.
Set, lighting, and sound are artful, reproducing well the weather and the simplicity of the farm and cabin. A natty suit with well-placed patches characterizes the city guy who breaks into life there. Both older men's worn work clothes contrast sharply with the actor's until they all get closer and Miles dons jeans.
Carole Kleinberg has made excellent choices in casting and bringing out the themes of art becoming life and reality becoming drama, as well as the motifs of the power of story-telling and importance of memory. She should be credited with eliciting Angus' correct reading of the final Hopkins poem (in sprung rhythm); a comma and accent (stress) marks were left out in Healey's script and could have changed the meaning.
All in all, however, The Drawer Boy's claims to classic status seem to me exaggerated. Comedy, mystery, and drama aren't proportioned enough to make any one predominant; is the ending positive or not? There's suspense, of course, but probably too much repetition and anticlimax. Banyan's production is also not very helpful in warding off boredom or impatience: the pace drags, especially early on, with too much time between short scenes. Are there memorable lines?
And what is to be made of all the pain the characters cause each other? With so many fictions based closely on fact, there's a tendency to edit on the side of keeping too much or little reality.
Because "it happened in real life" is often the excuse for lax editing or interpretation. For example, isn't Morgan's monologue a bit slick for the way he speaks in the rest of the play? How do we know the architectural abilities of the drawer? How did Miles get Angus off the farm and to the rehearsal? What is the significance of Miles' explaining his stint in Hamlet to Angus?
To me, what's very intriguing about The Drawer Boy is its inversion of the structural pattern of so many contemporary plays. A common practice is to stage what is essentially a story presenting exposition (and sometimes conclusion), told by a narrator (usually to one side of the stage) and illuminated by dramatized scenes. These pieces of theater present drama (like a play) within a story (narrative). The Drawer Boy, though, presents a salient story within a play.
Michael Healey seems to have gained more power as a playwright from being an actor than from creating theater as part of a collective. Banyan audiences can, in turn, witness inter-relationships among Healey's characters created powerfully by actors.
