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Within the first five minutes of Tom Griffin’s “The Boys Next Door,” you become aware that the play is not going to be a drama in the normal sense—with a beginning, middle and end—but instead a gentle episodic drift into the lives of four intellectually challenged men who live together in a group home.
There will be movement in the story, but not much, for their limitations are great. Lucien (an engaging Dorian M. O’Brien) at one point announces that he has a mental capacity “somewhere between a 5-year-old and an oyster,” yet he is inordinately proud of his library card and the books from the library that he will never read.
Arnold (an intense Matthew Conlon) is edgy and nervous, given to emotional highs and lows that change with the speed of turning on a faucet, but he is capable enough to hold a job as an usher at a movie theater. Likewise, Norman (Scott Hofer) has a job at a donut shop. Barry (Spencer Scott) is seemingly the most lucid, but scratch the surface and he is a schizophrenic with unreal plans.
Jack (Paul Velutis), a sympathetic but burned-out supervisor, drops in and out of their home. Periodically, he addresses the audience directly, not only to explain what’s going on, but to let us in on his own frustrations. His soliloquies are overly long and boring, and, anyway, they add nothing to any dramatic tension, sorely lacking in the first act.
A few titters emerging from the audience early on leave us wondering if we should be laughing at all, for we are finding fun in the mental shortcomings of the characters. Yet most comedy is the result of the deficiencies and stupidities of people who otherwise have a normal IQ or above—think Leonard and Sheldon in “The Big Bang Theory”—so who’s to say people on the other side of the spectrum can’t be funny? Not I.
All the actors admirably capture the character of their own “boy” with heartbreaking realism, my husband and I agreed.
I grew up with a neighbor similar to the character Sheila, a woman who visits her fellow mentally challenged adults in the group home, and my husband had faked his way into a state institution while researching a muckraking book on the mental health system in America. These richly drawn portrayals on stage at Quogue Community Hall reminded us of people we both have met and known.
If we had a quibble with the acting, it is with Mr. Conlon, who at times burst past the edges of any character who might be competent enough to hold a job—any job.
The first act hammers home the dissimilar quirks of the “boys,” and the action drifts from one unconnected episode to another with the darkening of the light. The second act plays off their individual mental issues with a separate, and touching, fugue for each.
Lucien will try to convince some sort of committee that he is competent—enough for what, I was never sure—even though he can’t get through that ABC song that kindergartners learn. Yet, in the middle of a befuddled speech, he turns to the audience and is suddenly normal, even eloquent, announcing: “I am here to remind the species of the species. … And without me, without my shattered crippled brain, you will never again be frightened of what you might have become. Or, indeed, by what your future might make you.”
Then he quickly retreats back into Lucien, with the mental capacity of a 5-year-old. It is a telling, tough moment for the audience—there but for the grace of God …
Barry the schizophrenic aspires to give golf lessons to a deaf neighbor, but Barry’s life is upended when his long-absent father comes for a visit. It does not go well.
Arnold, somewhat of a ringleader of the gang, turns grandiose and, in a true break with reality, attempts to run off to Russia, only to have Jack rescue him at the train station.
While all these episodes are sad, the most memorable occurs between Sheila, in a brilliant, edgy characterization by Jessica Howard, and Norman—donut-filled and lovable enough. He is just able to understand, and accept, the growing affection between them. When they dance under the ballroom lighting in their final scene, their love is as true as anyone’s, and you can’t help wondering—now what?
Mr. Hofer played the part nearly three decades earlier in Lindenhurst, and the director of this poignant staging by Hampton Theatre Company, Edward A. Brennan, had gone to see his friend in the role of Norman. Mr. Hofer’s performance then must have matched the daring and deft performance we saw Friday night.
You leave the theater recalling the forlorn Barry on his cot, the delusional Arnold at the train station, and the pathetic, innocent Lucien dimly aware of his limitations. But it is the connection, and dance, between Sheila and Norman that sticks in the mind the morning after.
Will this production be to everyone’s liking? Probably not.
Does it offer a night of thoughtful, haunting theater? Unequivocally, yes.
“The Boys Next Door” continues through April 8 at Quogue Community Hall. Showtimes are Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with matinées Sundays, March 25 and April 8, and Saturdays, March 31 and April 7, at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $30; $25 for age 65 plus, excluding Saturday evenings; $20 for guests younger than 35 and for theater industry members; and $10 for students younger than 21. Call 866-811-4111 or visit hamptontheatre.org.
on Mar 25, 2018