About the Play:

RARE BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

The Innocent Eye Test is a full-length comedy by Michael Healey. Imagine you are a Canadian art dealer staying at a luxurious hotel in Tuscany when your briefcase gets accidentally switched with that of a Ukrainian terrorist dealing in weapons-grade plutonium. Oops! To get yours back without getting yourself mixed up in the dirty deal – or getting yourself killed – will be tricky.

The Innocent Eye Test is rollicking farce set in a grand hotel in Tuscany, a gathering-place for people from across the globe. Two transactions are about to take place. In one, art is for sale; in the other, weapons-grade plutonium. When the money gets mixed up, it's up to Canadian art dealer and world-class innocent Samuel Kneck to sort it out. Sam is the quintessential Canadian – a trusting, polite consensus-builder. But nothing has prepared him for the Ukrainian arms dealer, the crooked casino owner, the clairvoyant cabaret performer and the pair of international spies who are trying to stiff, swindle and seduce him. The Innocent Eye Test is an old-fashioned farce about contemporary anxieties, from the author of the award-winning The Drawer Boy.

The Innocent Eye Test premiered in 2006 at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg. It subsequently transferred to the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto and has been mounted in community theatres.

Cast: 2 women, 5 men

What people say:

"Absolutely outstanding, sizzling comedy." — CBC Radio

"Hilarious! …fizzes over with laughs." — Winnipeg Free Press

"...a Feydeau-esque farce (many mistaken identities, doors banging open and shut), set in a jet-set hotel in Tuscany. Terrorists are trying to buy weapons-grade plutonium, while someone else is trying to sell art." — The Globe and Mail

"A hilarious farce, this show contains fast-paced comedy, mistaken identities and colourful characters that will have you laughing throughout." — Scarborough Mirror

About the Playwright:

Michael Healey is a renowned Canadian playwright and actor. He trained as an actor at Toronto's Ryerson Theatre School in the early 1980s. After ten years working as an actor on stages across Canada, his first play, a solo one-act called Kicked, was produced at the Fringe of Toronto Festival in 1996. Since then, he has become an exceptional voice in Canadian theatre. With an outstanding breadth of work, Michael has won a number of awards as a playwright, including Dora Mavor Moore awards, a Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, and a Chalmers Canadian Play Award, as well as awards across Canada and internationally.