The Drawer Boy

Michael Healy’s prize-winning play The Drawer Boy, which premiered in 1999, finally showcased across the Atlantic at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow. Directed by Andy Arnold - recently appointed Artistic Director at the Tron - the play hopefully marks the beginning of a new and ambitious season for the Tron Theatre.

The play is based on two farmers, childhood friends in Ontario, Canada: the stoical, blunt Morgan, and Angus, who has been left “simple” after a bombing in the war. Their daily grind is interrupted by Miles, a student from Toronto, looking for inspiration for his play on farmlife. However, what he uncovers is a tragic past, riddled with guilt, secrecy, heartbreak and loss.

The play combines drama with humour, as the audience is eased into the plot by watching Miles’ hopeless efforts to adjust to farmlife, creating an emotive piece filled with comical dialogue and an intense twist. The play explores the issues of mental health and hardship, as the characters depend on their memories of the past to keep them going. It questions truth and lies: why a lie is told, and how often the truth is overpowered by what people want to believe. It also addresses the idea of survival and the human condition - “if you don’t produce, you die.”

The Drawer Boy is wonderfully poetic: the story of the characters’ past is repeated throughout, with interjections of verse such as the idea of piecing together the sky, a continual reference to a stolen poetry book and the play closes with a recital of Gerald Manley’s At the Wedding March.

Brian Pettifer in the role of Angus is spell-bindingly real: a character left confused and damaged, while retaining an excellent ability with numbers. Benny Young is also great as the stoical Morgan, who is torn between the truth, and protecting both his friend and his own guilt-ridden conscience. Brian Ferguson completes the top cast as the naive, enthusiastic Miles. Hazel Blue’s well considered set and realistic sound effects by Phil Farr provide a wonderful backdrop for the piece.

Filled with mystery, guilt, dependancy, romance, humour and a petrified cow named Daisy, The Drawer Boy is an excellent piece of theatre that proves life on the farm is far from simple.