About the Play:

HARD TO FIND 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 suspicious Euro arms seller 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 Feydeau-esque farce (many mistaken identities, doors banging open and shut) set in a grand hotel in Tuscany, a gathering-place for people from across the globe. Two transactions are about to take place. Terrorists are trying to buy weapons-grade plutonium, while someone else is trying to sell art. 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. He is in Tuscany at the bidding of Darryl Plate, a Las Vegas entertainment mogul who is opening a museum back home and wants to acquire a Mark Tansey painting whose title, The Innocent Eye Test, is also that of the play. But nothing has prepared Sam for the foul-mouthed European arms dealer, the fast-talking American casino owner, the clairvoyant cabaret performer and the pair of international double agents 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 female, 5 male

What people say:

"Absolutely outstanding, sizzling comedy." — CBC Radio

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

"...this farce, set in a grand hotel in Tuscany where art and weapons-grade plutonium are traded, covers grounds (comedy, politics, moral anxieties) Healey is well-equipped to handle." — 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, he 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.