The Drawer Boy is a sweet, faded, very Canadian play, said to be one of the most popular dramas ever among our Northern neighbors.

There’s a curious deference in Michael Healy’s script, as if he wasn’t sure the material was worth all this fuss. He seems more interested in the genesis of the piece – inspired by a commune of Toronto post-hippies who fanned out among farmers in 1972 and turned their impressions into a popular long-running show – than in this wispy story of two lifelong pals who had a tough World War II.

In David Ellenstein’s staging for the North Coast Repertory Theatre, the play is amiable – who can resist something that opens with cows mooing and chickens clucking? – but not very engrossing. Part of the problem is the casting. These are very good actors not right for these roles.

The three characters are the two farmers and the city boy who shows up asking to find out what farming’s all about so he can take part in the collective development of a play. And I didn’t really believe any of them.

Angus obviously is slow, a genial soul who adds columns of figure with astonishing ease but forgets what happened moments before. Morgan is gruff, capable, protective and supposedly sly. Together they do all the farming.

Except Paul Hopper plays Angus as if auditioning for the Three Stooges while Frank Corrado reads more the romantic baritone than a hardscrabble rural survivor. Not only are these two seen talking more about the work than doing it, they also look pretty incapable.

But they are both appealing, generous actors. And they do suggest some dark, obscured past relationship which has gone too long unexamined. When the postponed examination finally happens, though, it lacks any impact of even make-believe reality.

Kevin Koppman-Gue is somewhat more successful in a considerably more appropriate assignment, a callow, idealistic youth rooting around in people’s lives for theatrical material. His breathless report of a cosmic link forged with one of the cows and his demonstration of a dance based on stacking hay bales are delivered with solemn comic skill.

So what is this story? First, the drawer of the title has nothing to do with furniture but instead, one who draws. That would be Angus, quite the budding dreamer-thinker-artist before the bomb hit in England. That drawer boy is the lead character in the bedtime story Morgan is begged to tell over and over, the one about the two pals who were never very good soldiers but did meet a pair of lovely girls they brought home from the war for a double wedding interrupted by tragedy.

Parts of that are true, others not so much. And the tragedy itself turns out to be sad but banal, almost another Canadian joke. There’s no resolution, exactly, except that truth is better than lies, if less convenient.

Set designer Marty Burnett’s farm is about as convincing as Frank Corrado’s farmer and the same goes for Valerie Henderson’s costumes. Matt Novotny found some lighting magic, though, and the beasts sounded lovely, thank you Chris Luessmann.

And patrons of this production will find themselves with something to contribute next time they’re talking theatre with Canadian friends. DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE