Compassionate performance lifts TLT's challenged 'Boys'

There are two very powerful scenes in Tom Griffin's compassionate, funny and deeply human play "The Boys Next Door," a look at four mentally challenged men and the social worker who checks in on them in their group apartment.

 Both are scenes in which characters transcend their mental and physical limitations to express themselves as "normal" people, however briefly. If the actors have done their jobs well — establishing the characters as individuals with inner lives and dreams, fears and hopes, in-jokes and unique world views — those scenes have the dramatic heft and electric jolt of solar flares.

At Wednesday night's preview performance of "Boys" at Tallahassee Little Theatre, the actors co-directed by Chuck Olsen and Lanny Thomas did their jobs very well indeed, delivering performances that charmed, moved and informed with nary a false or condescending note.

I bring more than a critic's eye to portrayals of people with mental challenges — I bring the heart of one who spent years working with the developmentally disabled residents of Sunland centers in Marianna and Tallahassee . TLT's actors touched my heart Wednesday night with compassionate, nuanced performances that captured the characters' innate dignity, humor and individuality.

Jef Canter gave a warm, gently funny performance as mildly retarded doughnut shop worker Norman Bulansky, whose jingling ring of keys is a psychic security blanket. Norman is in love with Sheila, played to delicate, charming perfection by Laura Johnson, and their scenes together at the dances arranged for residents are delightful. One of the goosebump moments I mentioned earlier occurs between Norman and Sheila when Canter and Johnson's tender, awkward shuffle on the dance floor transformed into a lyrical pas de deux full of sweet romance and hope.

The second goosebump scene focused on Anthony Green as Lucien P. Smith, a profoundly retarded black man who checks out stacks of library books he can't read and considers Spiderman his personal guardian angel. In order to keep his Social Security benefits, Lucien has to speak before a state senate committee (he calls it the "state snake") to demonstrate his ability to care for himself. Halfway through his testimony, as Lucien is laboriously chanting his "Alphabet Song" mantra, the lights dim and he addresses the committee (and the audience) as a regular, albeit powerfully eloquent, man. Green was so quietly brilliant at getting inside Lucien's skin that when he stepped out of it in that scene, it was profoundly and immediately moving.