Tom Griffin's much produced and heralded comedy/drama, “The Boys Next Door,” opens at the Actors Theatre Playhouse for 12 performances on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, Sept. 8 through Oct. 1, at 7:30 p.m.
“This touching, comic, and compassionate play explores with wit and sensitivity the daily lives of four young men with mental disabilities and the toll it takes on their caregiver and overseeing social worker,” according to a news release.
The New York Times wrote “what makes this play worth seeing is the manner in which the playwright creates unsentimental characters who maintain their dignity and humanity in their world that is, at best, a place of utter and profound confusion.”
According to ATP Director Marilyn Tullgren, “This is such a touching dramatic work. Tom Griffin takes us into the everyday world of the mentally challenged with such wit and sensitivity that you come away with a greater understanding of what it means to be so afflicted.”
The setting is a communal residence in a New England city, where four mentally handicapped men live under the supervision of an earnest, but increasingly “burned out” social worker named Jack.
Norman, who works in a doughnut shop and is unable to resist the lure of the sweet pastries, takes great pride in the huge bundle of keys that dangles from his waist; Lucien P. Smith has the mind of a 5-year-old but imagines that he is able to read and comprehend the weighty books he lugs about; Arnold, the ringleader of the group, is a hyperactive, compulsive chatterer, who suffers from deep-seated insecurities and a persecution complex; while Barry, a brilliant schizophrenic who is devastated by the unfeeling rejection of his brutal father, fantasizes that he is a golf pro.
Mingled with scenes from the daily lives of these four, where “little things” sometimes become momentous (and often very funny), are moments when we are reminded that the handicapped, like the rest of us, want only to love and laugh and find some meaning and purpose.
In the cast are G. Sherman, H. Morrison, Bruce Holloway, David Peck, Harral Hamilton, Jonathan Reid, Heather McCormack, Gail Haas, Jim Bombicino, and Arthur Pettee.