An unforgettable production

People with mental impairments come in many varieties, including the chronically incapaci- tated, the merely nervous and the indecisive. Playwright Tom Griffin explores the gamut of these conditions in “The Boys Next Door,” focusing on four such individuals sharing semi-supervised living quarters.

Griffin’s play is discomforting, often quite funny but almost always a heart-wrenching experience. It’s given an arresting, skillfully interpreted production at Costa Mesa’s Vanguard University.

The boys are a mixed lot. Arnold is a skittish paranoid, with frayed nerve endings, obsessing about life in Russia. Norman exists in a state of confusion, living for his ever-present plate of doughnuts. Lucien is an extreme case with limited communication skills who probably should be institutionalized. And Barry, the most “normal” on the surface, is a self-styled golf pro, offering lessons at $1.13 each.

Supervising their activities, to his continued consternation, is Jack, a social worker who ? as much as he cares for these unfortunate people ? realizes he must break away from them to preserve his own sanity.

“We grow and change,” he laments. “They never do.”

Director Susan Berkompas has elicited some superior performances from her dedicated ensemble of student actors, heightened by the degree of difficulty involved in pulling it off. We’re at once intrigued and repelled by the characters, as is Jack, who serves as the audience’s guide through this strange world.

Andrew Visokey embodies the frustrations of everyday life, magnified to a large degree, as Arnold. His rabid attention to detail and insistence on being noticed are extensions of “normal” behavior, and Visokey portrays these traits with single-minded zeal.

As the doughnut-obsessed Norman, Andy Christensen delves into the Robert De Niro school of method acting ? he gained 15 pounds to portray his gluttonous role. Christensen is most touching as he conducts an awkward romance of sorts with another mentally challenged character (Andrea Carpenter, also quite touching).

It’s not until you double-check your program that you realize that the deeply impaired Lucien actually is being portrayed by a woman ? Donna Johnson, who projects the sad ferocity of someone striving to make sense of an utterly complex world. Johnson renders a heartbreaking performance as a character reveling in the minutiae of life.

Aaron Campbell’s Barry, the golf aficionado, functions on a near-normal plane until his vulnerable psyche is exposed in a visit from his wastrel father (William Pruett in a dynamic cameo), whom he hasn’t seen in nine years. Campbell succeeds in establishing his intellectual superiority to the others, which renders his eventual collapse that much more poignant.

As the patient-to-a-fault supervisor who attempts to help these four, Justin Merando as Jack projects the consuming frustration of his task splendidly. We understand that Jack must cut the cord to preserve his own psyche, yet we fear for the future of the young men without his comforting presence.

“The Boys Next Door” will touch a variety of emotions among its audience members. Berkompas and her fine performers have created a world that theatergoers won’t soon forget.