DRN: Boys Next Door Review

Bridging the Gap into the World of The Boys Next Door

By Chelsye P. Ginn, Interviews Editor

When I entered Tallahassee Little Theatre’s doors to see Tom Griffin’s The Boys Next Door on February 8, I honestly had no idea what type of dramatic experience was in store for me. Before settling into my seat, I did not know the premise of the play—I did not realize that The Boys Next Door would contain material that would challenge me as an individual, or that the play would contain moments when I would not know whether to laugh or cry. Despite my surprise, I did not find the production at all disappointing.

The Boys Next Door centers around the lives of Norman Bulansky (Jef Canter), Lucien P. Smith (Anthony Green), Arnold Wiggins (Andy Joirshie), and Barry Klemper (John Sackman), four roommates with mental disabilities, and Jack (Rob Roller), the man who supervises their group apartment. Norman and Lucien are men with developmental disabilities, Arnold has a nervous disorder, and Barry is a high-functioning type-A schizophrenic. Because the plot of the show functions in a slice-of-life fashion, where the audience witnesses everyday events rather than a more linear story, the characters really move the show along. The four actors playing “the boys next door” very well could have made their characters’ disabilities their primary distinction and characteristic. However, Canter, Green, Joirshie, and Sackman instead each constructed intricate, complicated characters with desires, emotions, and personalities, rather than copping out and playing a caricature of a person with a disability. The same can also be said of Laura Johnson, who played Sheila, Norman’s love interest. Johnson successfully crafted a character that happened to have a developmental disability; she did not merely act out the personification of a disability.

I believe that Tom Griffin wrote The Boys Next Door with the intention that the play would remind society that people with disabilities are not broken people—that disabled persons can feel, judge, dream, and love just as well as any person without a disability. Furthermore, the staging by directors Chuck Olsen and Larry Thomas reinforced this notion. In one of the show’s most beautiful scenes, Norman and Sheila danced together in a style that could be described as awkward, clumsy, and oblivious; both actors were slightly slumped over and moved in jerky, spastic motions. Then the lights changed from a bright pink to a cool blue, and Canter and Johnson straightened their postures and launched into an effortlessly graceful, sinuous dance. This staging symbolized that despite the clumsiness and lack of coordination present in Norman and Sheila’s dancing, in the eyes of these characters, they danced as lithely as Balanchine’s muses. Their hearts and spirits soared, and their dance was beautiful and complete, regardless of what an outsider might think.

The production design further enhanced the concept that things are often more complicated than they first appear to be. Christien Fontaine’s set design placed the majority of the play’s action in the title characters’ living room. However, pieces of the living room set cleverly rearranged to suggest different locations throughout the play. For example, the kitchen counter unfolded to create a movie theatre-style chair to represent Arnold’s place of work. The stage-right wall of the apartment could also be turned around to place the scene in a dance hall instead of the apartment. Matthew Newbury and Laurence Lindsay’s lighting also

effectively underscored heightened moments of the play by drawing the audience from the soft, natural lights of reality into saturated blue pools of light where actors would deliver introspective personal monologues. The manipulation of color paired with a suspension of reality during which the audience could see into the hearts and minds of the characters.

Tallahassee Little Theatre’s production of The Boys Next Door presented a window into the lives of adults living with developmental disabilities in order to bring awareness to the disabled community. The directors and actors met with local mental-health experts to research the disabilities portrayed in this production. Furthermore, the production held symposia after each Saturday performance that allowed local groups such as Ability First and Pyramid Studios to discuss different aspects of mental-health efforts. I was thrilled to witness theatre people bringing awareness to something important in our society through theatre and then connecting audience members to outlets that serve our community. Ultimately, this production truly served as a collaborative community project.