About the Play:

The Boys Next Door has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

The Boys Next Door is a full-length comedic drama by Tom Griffin. This very funny yet very touching play focuses on the lives of four neurodiverse men who live in a group home under the watchful eye of a sincere, but increasingly despairing, social worker. Filled with humour, The Boys Next Door is is also marked by the compassion and understanding with which it peers into the half-lit world of its protagonists. Particularly suitable for schools and play contests.

The Boys Next Door deals with four men who have various intellectual disabilities. They live together semi-independently in a group home under the supervision of their chief caretaker, the social worker Jack Palmer, who is run absolutely ragged and is considering quitting. Norman, who works in a doughnut shop and is unable to resist the lure of the sweet pastries, takes great pride in the huge bundle of keys that dangles from his waist; Lucien P. Smith has the mind of a five-year-old but imagines that he is able to read and comprehend the weighty books he lugs about; Arnold, the ringleader of the group, is a hyperactive, compulsive chatterer, who suffers from deep-seated insecurities and a persecution complex; while Barry, a brilliant schizophrenic who is devastated by the unfeeling rejection of his brutal father, fantasizes that he is a golf pro. The play is set in the 1980s, when the distinctions between mental illness and developmental disabilities were being brought to light. Group homes, instead of institutional living, were a new concept, fraught with challenges. Mingled with scenes from the daily lives of these four, where "little things" sometimes become momentous (and often very funny), are moments of great poignancy when, with touching effectiveness, we are reminded that these four roommates, like the rest of us, want only to love and laugh and find some meaning and purpose in the too brief time that they, like their more fortunate brothers, are allotted on this earth.

The Boys Next Door premiered in 1986 at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey. By 1989 it was the most produced play in America, and in 1990 the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. It is one of the most popular plays about people with neurodiversity and has been seen in over 3500 productions in the United States and Canada, and has had openings in Paris, Tokyo, Oslo, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Vienna, Sydney, and Johannesburg, among others. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 2 female, 7 male

What people say:

"The Boys Next Door is one of the most unusual…and one of the most rewarding plays in town." — BackStage

"Griffin's play hits squarely on the truth of life with its constant interplays and shadings of triumphs and tears." — New York Daily News

"The Boys Next Door moves the audience to an awareness of how many things in everyday life we take for granted…." — The New York Times

About the Playwright:

Tom Griffin (1946-2018) was an American playwright and screenwriter, known for the critically acclaimed play The Boys Next Door. His plays were produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, in London's West End, and regional theatres in the United States and in Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Over his career, he wrote 14 screenplays, for Warner Brothers, Paramount, MGM, ABC, and others.