‘Boys’ Opens Door of Opportunity for Actors

The sad fact is that the American theater business depends on many bad plays to keep itself afloat. For awhile in the ‘80s, it seemed that Larry Shue’s abysmal “The Nerd” was being done everywhere by everybody. Bernard Slade’s “Same Time, Next Year” would never, ever compete with even sub-par Neil Simon, but it is money in the bank.

Since it opened in 1986, Tom Griffin’s “The Boys Next Door” has become a seemingly permanent fixture, up to and including the recent version on CBS starring Nathan Lane. It, too, is not a very good play, but there are reasons that a serious small theater like the Alliance Repertory Company would grab it up for yet another revival.

From “Rage!” to “Tales of the Lost Formicans” to “Minor Demons” to “Mud,” the Alliance has usually tried to pair interesting playwriting with interesting opportunities for its cadre of talented actors. With “Boys,” we get at least the second half of the equation.

Actors Robert Neches, Elkanah J. Burns, David T. Hayman, Joel Stoffer (collectively “The Boys”) and Karen Rosa have the chance, under Peter Fox’s direction, to play mentally handicapped adults with dreams, desires and conflicts. Griffin moves these characters from their usual place on the periphery to center stage, and their humanity is by far the play’s main strength.

Neches’ hyper-neurotic Arnold, Burns’ withdrawn Lucien, Hayman’s laconic, love-struck Norman and Stoffer’s disturbed Barry share an apartment like a topsy-turvy college dorm room with counselor Jack (Paul Sandman) helping them through the day-to-day struggles. “The Boys Next Door” tests the mettle of solid actors to inhabit characters who are too undeveloped to carry on logical conversations for very long, but developed enough that they have human passions. (Norman, for example, wants to jump in the sack with Sheila.)

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Griffin falls so short of imaginative ways of getting inside these guys that the actors have to do the work of the play. Veering from flat sitcom to overt pamphleteering, the play’s only grounding is the set of individual voices, ranging from Barry’s escape into golf from a life of terror to Arnold’s nonstop thriving on crises.

Jack notes that “the boys” don’t change, but that’s not really true. Hayman shows us Norman’s need for love blossoming, while Stoffer moves beyond behavioral shtick to a sense of tragedy. Neches has his own shtick, but suggests that Arnold might change too. Burns and Rosa play entertainingly on the surface (except for one aside that Griffin can’t pull off). It’s actually Sandman’s Jack who is plain and predictable, the nice guy role with almost nothing for the actor to do.

“The Boys Next Door” sends us messages rather than reveals truths, but the Alliance’s actors find the human pulse beating under the work of a hack.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “The Boys Next Door.”

* WHERE: The Alliance Repertory Company, 3204 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. Ends April 20.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* CALL: (213) 660-8587.