Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy, which is set on a farm in central Ontario in 1972, is a contemporary-theater rarity in that it seeks to explore universal themes rather than tie itself to the kitetails of hot-button issues. There’s no talk of gender choice here, or cyberspace romances, and neither does it touch on the political realities of a rapidly shrinking globe. Rather, the two central characters, Morgan and Angus, inhabit a cul-de-sac of human activity that’s barely noted these days in grade-school geography classes, much less considered material for the stage.

Grant Wood’s American Gothic and some of Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers aside, farmers are rarely the subject of artistic contemplation. Healey has fashioned the life story of two Canadian farmers into a parable of friendship and loyalty that’s enhanced by suggestions of mythic power in their bonding. Using sparse language set off by poetic speeches that erupt unexpectedly, and constructing his work in the Mamet signature structure of brief, staccato-like scenes, Healey has transformed a simple chronicle about the passage of time into an affecting drama that has won a number of Canadian playwriting awards.

The work is based on a 1972 experiment that grew from the notes taken by a group of young Canadian actors who went to live with farmers in Ontario to study their lifestyle. These experiences were fashioned into a documentary-style stage project called The Farm Show that made Canadian theater history. In The Drawer Boy, a young actor, Miles, appears at the screen door of the farmhouse where Morgan and Angus live and asks whether he can work for them in exchange for observing their daily occupations. He’s taken on, but over time he alters the balance of the pair’s relationship. As he uncovers their history, which extends back to childhood and serving together in World War II, he begins to ask questions that stir up memories encrusted with much more than the truth.

At Merrimack Rep, director Charles Towers has chosen to pace the first act in slow motion, as if to underline the deeper meaning of every gesture and every monosyllabic response; my feeling was that the play is capable of delivering this message without the need for such a heavy directorial hand. Healey himself is less adroit with his stagecraft than with his language: he overuses the device of blackouts to denote the passage of time, and that further slows down the evening.

Fortunately, the cast is appealing and polished — particularly Dennis Robertson as the addled Angus, whose brain was shut down by a piece of World War II shrapnel. Robertson neither condescends to his character nor makes fun of the man who has lost his short-term memory in his need to suppress the deeds that are hidden there. Ross Bickell’s straight-talking Morgan is a man who keeps his secrets without any affectations. Steven Boyer as Miles, who’s definitely out of his league as a farmhand, is alternately naive and wise in a rounded portrait of a young artist in search of himself.

The production unfolds on a set designed by Judy Gailen that conjures Norman Rockwell — a homy kitchen circa mid-century North America except for the surreal quality of the views out the windows, as eerie a landscape as those in Todd Haynes’s film Far from Heaven. Lighting designer John Ambrosone has bathed the distant trees and hills in an unearthly sunset glow, and the starry night he’s concocted seems more symbolic than real. Healey has created a rural Neverland outside the mainstream that is no less tense or dangerous than the streets of a modern city, but he’s given its inhabitants a cloak of humanity to keep them from harm.