Healey’s THE DRAWER BOY, about an ambitious city actor who uncovers a long-buried family secret when he ventures into farm country to research the lives of two aging bachelors, is one of the most successful plays in Canadian theatre history. Since its premiere in 1999 at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille, THE DRAWER BOY has won countless awards, including Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award and The Helen Hayes Award. In 2001 it made Time Magazine’s top ten list as “a new classic.â€
This is a humorous yet highly emotional look at an unusual relationship between two men who have been companions since childhood and who now live together, eking out a living on a piece of land which barely supports them. Someone once wrote that a man is the sum of his memories. Proving this are the characters at the center of THE DRAWER BOY.
Miles, the young actor, is doing his research for a theatre project with hopes that the experiences offered by the real world of living on a farm will be perfect for his course. The fact that Angus (one of the farmers) has a memory which barely recalls events from just a few minutes before, complicates his plans. Here, the central question of how Angus lost his memory becomes the hook on which the rest of the play hangs thereby giving way to suspicion of darker events lurking in the shadows
