A story flourishes in fertile farm soil

The palpable sensation of a transfixed audience accompanies “The Drawer Boy” at the Colony Theatre in Burbank. Actor-turned-playwright Michael Healey’s celebrated study of the power of storytelling on two longtime Canadian comrades receives a beautiful, understated Los Angeles premiere.

“The Drawer Boy” has been a hit since its 1999 debut production at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille (whose farm family collation “The Farm Play” inspired Healey’s scenario). Time magazine cited it as one of the 10 best plays of 2001. That year, the Steppenwolf Theatre production set Chicago agog, and the 2003 Southern California premiere at South Coast Repertory mesmerized Costa Mesa. This season, the magazine American Theatre named “Drawer Boy” the most produced regional title.

“Drawer Boy” (a title alluding to sketches, not receptacles) takes place in 1972, set on a humble Ontario homestead (superbly realized by designer David Potts). Its occupants are Angus (Chip Heller) and Morgan (Robert Budaska), lifelong friends and WWII veterans with an eccentric, long-established domestic routine.

Their experience is what Miles (Brian Taylor), an actor from a visiting theater collective, wishes to soak up. Morgan, the farm’s brusque muscle, is resistant; the savant Angus, upon whose Blitz-blasted memory loss “Drawer Boy” turns, embraces the notion.

Director David Rose draws Healey’s initial vignettes with a chuckling, casual hand, suggesting a variation on Paul Osborn. Morgan enjoys assigning the naive Miles ludicrous tasks, like rotating chickens. Angus keeps getting startled by the shaggy young stranger entering his kitchen.

Then the darker emotional history lurking beneath the quirky comedy surfaces as Morgan, at Angus’ bidding, recounts the tale of “the drawer boy” and “the farmer boy,” i.e., them. Meanwhile, the eavesdropping Miles is transcribing the whole bittersweet saga.

From here, “Drawer Boy” launches an innately theatrical tour of the value of art and the mysteries of the human heart. Healey may be more precocious than profound, and he embraces sentiment a bit freely. Yet his instincts and imagination are self-evident, and his triple-layered tale is fiercely funny and, finally, deeply affecting.

So is this production, an exemplary realization. Besides Potts’ work, A. Jeffrey Schoenberg’s simple costumes, Lisa D. Katz’s incisive lighting, the detailed props by MacAndME and Drew Dalzell’s folksy sound form a homogenous evocation of the bucolic.

And the acting is memorable. Taylor, coping with the sketchiest motivations and a Kate Jackson-esque wig, is most winning. He’d have to be, because the shambling Heller and weathered Budaska are marvelous, giving inhabited, perfectly matched performances that break hearts. This sums up “The Drawer Boy,” the rich populist humor and poetic force of which signals a genuine modern classic.

*

‘The Drawer Boy’

Where: Colony Theatre Company, 555 N. 3rd St., Burbank

When: Fridays to Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m.; also this Saturday and April 24, 3 p.m.; and April 29, May 6, 8 p.m.

Ends: May 9

Price: $26-$32

Info: (818) 558-7000

Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes