The Drawer Boy 2017

Miles, Jakob Ehman, a young actor from a Toronto theatre group, travels to rural Ontario to observe two elderly bachelor farmers as part of his research for a new play. He steps into their quiet world with curiosity, and his presence nudges the farm’s routine toward a performance-like rhythm. As he documents their days, the line between verité theatre and lived memory begins to blur, and the farmers’ lives start to flow through the lens of someone else’s storytelling.

On the farm, Morgan, Richard Clarkin, a blunt, protective presence, shoulders the caretaking of Angus, Stuart Hughes, a man whose brain damage from the London bombing in World War II has left his memory fragile. The two men have built a stubborn, precarious balance that keeps their household intact, even as the weight of history presses from the edges of their shared history. Morgan’s steady humor and quiet discipline anchor a partnership that is both affectionate and necessary.

Miles learns that the story they’ve been living and telling—about two tall women who once came to Canada to live with them—is not a simple record of fact but a carefully crafted fiction. The revelation carries a heavy sadness: exposing it as fiction could crack the friendship these men have guarded for years. Yet the act of telling their life as drama also reveals a deeper truth about memory, longing, and belonging. The process turns into a two-way exchange: the story being shaped for the stage and the history the men thought they owned being reshaped in real time.

As the play unfolds, Miles discovers that art can become life, and that his draft of their history has the power to awaken something long dormant in Angus. The performance isn’t just Miles’s project; it becomes a catalyst that redefines their relationships, testing loyalties while granting a fragile, luminous form of memory back to Angus. The Drawer Boy thus examines how storytelling can create meaning, even when it reinterprets or revises the facts, and how a community’s past can be reimagined to illuminate the present.

“We’re here to get your history and give it back to you.”

The Drawer Boy premiered in Toronto at Theatre Passe Muraille in 1999 and went on to be produced by Ed Mirvish Productions at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto and the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg in 2001. The 2001/02 revival was a collaboration with the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and later toured major regional theatres, including Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius, Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, and the Vancouver Playhouse. The play won the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, a Chalmers Award, and a Governor General’s Award.

Its London premiere arrived at Finborough Theatre on 19 June 2012, featuring John Bett, Neil McCaul, and Simon Lee Phillips, with direction by Eleanor Rhode. A revival followed, produced by Snapdragon Productions, continuing the piece’s exploration of memory, storytelling, and the power of performance to reshape life.