The Drawer Boy
Playwright: Michael Healey
At: Steppenwolf Theatre,
1650 N. Halsted Street
Phone: ( 312 ) 335-1650
Tickets: $35-$45
Runs through: June 10
by Mary Shen Barnidge
When you have two actors who could probably sell out the run with a recitation of "The Walrus And The Carpenter," witnessing them do their stuff on an intelligent and well-crafted script is a bonus. And when that script could, in clumsier hands, emerge as cartoonishly facile as the aforementioned poem, a sweet, sensitive ( but never soppily sentimental ) interpretation by seasoned professionals is serendipity, indeed.
Certainly there is plenty in Michael Healey's play to push audience buttons. Its premise: A callow young actor proposes to observe a pair of farmers in their everyday activities, pursuant to participating in a group artistic project honoring the bucolic life ( "We take your history, and we give it back to you" ) . In the first act, we guffaw at greenhorn Miles' attempts to learn farm work, instructed by gruff old Morgan, and chuckle over the childlike behavior of the latter's brain-damaged partner, Angus. In the second act, we soften to the fraternal affection at the roots of their symbiotic relationship ( think George and Lennie in Of Mice And Men ) and watch with joy and apprehension the reawakening of Angus' cognitive powers ( think The Miracle Worker ) , anticipating the inevitable catharsis when painful secrets will be revealed and the healing will be complete.
It would be easy to play this material sitcom-style, but Anna D. Shapiro's delicate directorial touch checks any tendency on the part of the actors to coast on cuteness. Not that John Mahoney or Frank Galati, veteran performers steeped in the ensemble-based Steppenwolf ethos, are likely to succumb to grandstanding ( this early in the run, anyway ) . Both are obviously enjoying themselves, but never do they put their pleasure before ours. Nor does Johnny Galecki, as the ingenuous Miles, resign himself to playing straight man, but carries his full share of the dramatic narrative.
At several points in the play, characters accuse one another of disturbing the status quo, saying, "You did this to me." What Healey does to us is to remind us of the artist's power to "draw out" the truth when and where it lies buried, thus freeing those imprisoned by artifice born of despair—a parable of rebirth and resurrection rendered even more timely in an exquisite production endowed with all the warmth and humor of a spring rain after a hard winter.
