Theatre in Review: The Drawer Boy (Oberon Theatre Ensemble/Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex)Angus, a middle-aged Canadian farmer, is the drawer boy, although what that means is revealed only gradually in Michael Healey's play. It is 1972, somewhere in central Ontario. The obviously brain-damaged Angus, who suffers from a functional loss of short-term memory, shares his home with his lifelong friend, Morgan. Their lives are simple: Morgan takes care of the heavy lifting, and Angus, who has a Rain Man-style facility with numbers, keeps the accounts. One day is like another as they manage to scrape out a living. This not-quite-idyll is interrupted by the arrival of Miles, a young actor. This is the era of experimental theatre collectives, and Miles is doing research for a collaborative piece about farm life. Before Healey lets this running gag go too far, some of the best scenes in The Drawer Boy feature Morgan, in his most deadpan manner, amusing himself by feeding Miles bits of disinformation. Asked to describe his routine, Morgan replies, "It's an emotional roller-coaster," following that up with a portrait of life in the dairy barn: The cows, you see, live in a state of perpetual terror, giving up every last drop of milk in order keep themselves from being turned into steak dinners. Morgan also tells Miles that Angus was injured in a bombing in London during World War II; this is true, as far as it goes -- but then Miles overhears Morgan telling Angus his nightly bedtime story, which strongly suggests that both men once lived with British war brides before tragedy struck. Miles, unaware of his own opportunism, incorporates this story into his play; when they see a rehearsal, Morgan is enraged at the theft of his personal history -- but the episode has a strangely jarring effect on Angus' memory. The main trouble with The Drawer Boy is Angus' affliction, which seems less like a clinically accurate syndrome than a playwright's invention, subject to all sorts of sentimental manipulations. The more we learn about Angus, the less convincing he becomes. His mental abilities shift markedly within a single scene, just at the point that Healey needs a new plot twist. Ultimately, he's a contrivance rather than a character, and when, at the eleventh hour, Morgan rolls out the full truth about their shared past in a beautifully written monologue, the impact of it is muted by what has happened before. It doesn't help that Healey goes overboard in spoofing Miles' ingenuous nature, making him the patsy for too many of Morgan's outlandish tales and giving him ridiculous things to do, such as getting down on all fours and mooing, in order to impersonate a cow for his theatre piece. Nevertheless, this is a fairly painless experience thanks to the solid direction of Alexander Dinelaris and the work of his three-person cast. William Laney's carefully controlled performance goes a long way toward making Angus' oddness seem real; he is especially good at showing how Angus operates within a very narrow set of circumstances, and how any curve ball thrown his way proves too much for him to handle. Equally good is Brad Fryman as Morgan, his unemotional manner belying a lifetime's worth of guilt and anger; Fryman is a skilled underplayer, and both he and Laney, who play off each other with perfect timing, are worth seeking out. Alex Fast does a surprisingly deft job of purging the role of Miles of its goofier aspects. The action unfolds on Rebecca Lord-Surratt's set, a cutaway view of the farmhouse; it's an authentic-looking interior, with sad details, such as the unfinished upstage wall, which tell you a great deal about the farmers' impoverished way of life. Oddly, there are two rectangular projection screens in the yard, on which we see various sky looks; they look like drive-in movie screens and are needlessly distracting. Amith A. Chandrashaker's lighting expertly creates several time-of-day looks, including some lovely moon-washed evenings. David Murin's costumes neatly contrast the worn-out work clothes worn by Morgan and Angus with Miles' oh-so-'70s cutoff shorts and tie-dyed t-shirts. Nick Moore's sound design reinforces his original music and includes various effects, such as birdsong and the tolling of church bells. As far as I can tell, this is the belated New York debut of a play that, since its first production in 1999, has been staged all over the country. Based on the audience reception at the performance I attended, it has many crowd-pleasing qualities, but you have to be of a sentimental turn of mind to enjoy them, I think. The most disappointing thing about The Drawer Boy is that it begins as a work of some rigor, only to turn into a misty-eyed contrivance passing as a fable of devotion.--David Barbour 
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