The Drawer Boy

The Jungle kicks off their new season with a trip north of the border and quite literally down memory lane. Michael Healey’s acclaimed play takes inspiration from the real-life 1970s people’s-theater project The Farm Show to tell the story of two isolated Ontario farmers whose quietude is disrupted by a nosy city-boy actor who wants to create a theater piece based on their lives. Imagine The Simple Life with a naïve, well-meaning hippie instead of the spoiled rich girls. The farmers, Angus and Morgan, aren’t so sure they want their pasts put onstage—Morgan’s standoffishness masks deeper issues, while Angus barely recognizes the past anymore since the wartime head injury that robbed him of his short-term memory. (In case you’re tempted to groan “not another Memento ripoff,” know that Healey’s play debuted the year before the movie did.) Casey Stangl, late of the much-missed Eye of the Storm, directs.
Jungle, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis, (612) 822-7063, www.jungletheater.com