LOCALS 'BOYS' MAKE GOOD

posted by James Reel

    This past week, I had the most pleasant kind of surprise you can experience in the theater. I went to a show put on by a community troupe, ready to make allowances for the usual weaknesses, but witnessed work on a much higher level than I would ever expect from this group:

    In a small hall in a retirement facility tucked a couple of blocks behind St. Joseph's Hospital, a little community-theater troupe has mounted a production that's about as good as any you'd get from the city's more professional companies.
    Finely balanced performances lend both grace and exuberance to Tom Griffin's The Boys Next Door, a comedy-drama about four mentally challenged men coping with the world under the supervision of a kind but burned-out social worker. It's a challenging project for the Catalina Players, not because of the subject matter, but because the script forces the actors to throw themselves into totally alien roles, rather than merely play variations on themselves.