The Drawer Boy seems to be a play about the nature of truth and illusion; about how people can be satisfied with an illusion that meets that their expectations for happiness. And, indeed, it is that, but only to a point. The theme of Angus being satisfied with the illusion that Morgan has spoon fed him (visual pun intended). If the meaning of the play were a disease, that would be symptom; the disease itself would be how people can be every bit as viscerally impacted by a fictional story as by reality. To fully appreciate what this play is trying to say, think of Morgan as The Drawer Boy and Angus as the audience.
Morgan is acting out a fictional version of the past. He does this constantly; if not every single day for thirty years, then probably quite close to it. He repeats it often enough that Angus accepts it as the true story. Deep inside his mind, Angus does remember the truth. This much can be gleaned by the ways it which the reality of the past subconsciously manifest themselves as repetitious ritual: the teaspoon of water, the smell of bread baking, searching for the blueprint drawings. Somewhere deep down, Angus recognizes that Morgan’s story is fiction and not reality, but he is emotionally drawn to accept. The dichotomy between Angus who is suffering from brain trauma which has caused his memory loss and an audience watching a play or movie or TV show may seem imperfect, but take a second for possibly painful or embarrassing self-reflection. How often have you personally been so emotionally by watching a movie that you have cried? Or felt goosebumps and the cold sense of a strange sense of dread around you? Or gone rushing out of the theater infused with an unusual sense of energy and purpose? These and many other emotional responses both superficial and of a more profound depth are commonly experienced by literally tens hundreds of millions every single day. Take another second to really think with clarity and this sort tangibly emotional response to a story you know to be made up is really kind of ridiculous.
And yet it happens every single time. On certain occasions it happens to an unusual degree. On very rare occasions the phenomenon can attain such a level of influence that it quite literally changes a person’s life. Perhaps it inspires them to pursue a new career or take a trip around the world or end a relationship. Ridiculous, right? Well, maybe not so much. Because in reality when you lying in bed at night and crying your eyes over a movie or TV show—or even a commercial—it is not the fiction that is making you cry. You know that character who dies as the end is not real and is just an actor who lives to play jerks in the next few movies. You are not crying because of the fake story; you are crying the fake story has triggered something in you. Sometimes this trigger may be an obvious thing you can remember quite easy and so make the connection. On the other hand, sometimes the trigger is buried deep in the subconscious, so deeply that you have no choice but to think you are ridiculously crying over the actions of people who don’t exist in a story made up by some guy typing in his underwear on a lumpy couch.
Untrue stories like that told by Morgan to Angus and like The Drawer Boy watched by audiences and like movies and plays and TV shows and books and operas all the power to substantially affect our emotional state. Some have a capacity to create that emotional impact at a much more intense level, but the fact is that even something as divorced from reality as a thirty-second ad has the potential power to leave the hardiest of souls blubbering like a baby. Not because a viewer connects with the tragedy of not being able to squeeze the Charmin, but because the tragedy of having the package of soft bath tissue unceremoniously ripped from your hands triggers something inside you that may not even recognize. The Drawer Boy is all about the power of fiction and performance to impact people to the same degree as truth and reality.
