Night at the Theater: The Boys Next Door

Donna and I returned from our East Texas trip just in time to catch a performance of The Boys Next Door at the Angelo Civic Theater.

The play, written by Tom Griffin, was first produced in the late 1980s. It is set in Boston, where a group of 4 men with varying degrees of mental disabilities live together in a house. The men are cared for by Jack Palmer, a social worker who checks in on the men regularly.

The play focuses on a series of vignettes over a period of about two months. The vignettes are usually comical, yet they reveal the challenges the men encounter as well as their occasional successes. The vignettes also show the emotional toll the job takes on Jack as he increasingly becomes burned out with his job and seeks employment elsewhere.

For the most part, the play is humorous, but it takes a dramatic turn when the abusive father of Barry Klemper, a schizophrenic, comes to visit.

The play does a good job, I think, of providing insight into the struggles of people with various disabilities.