In The Drawer Boy, an honest, earnest drama at the Kansas City Repertory Theatre, the twin Garys of the local stage (Gary Holcombe and Gary Neal Johnson) both demonstrated that, even on the biggest stage in town, nothing stirs audiences more than serious character work. Holcombe was extraordinary as a brain-damaged Canadian farmer, inhabiting the man without the showiness or well-meaning condescension that actors often bring to such roles, while Scrooge-for-life Johnson brought his own customary, cantankerous excellence to the role of that farmer's friend and caretaker. Several months later, in the Kansas City Actors Theatre's Taking Sides, Holcombe again found the human in a part that could have been showy: Nazi-era German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, arguing for his life before the American military man charged with purging postwar Berlin of the Third Reich. If these performances were paintings, we would call them photo-real: just the men themselves, painstakingly arrived at through precise observation.
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