THEATER REVIEW : ‘The Boys Next Door’ Has Much to Recommend It : The comic drama gets off to a slow start, but the Santa Paula production succeeds with a top-notch cast.

Four developmentally disabled men share an apartment that’s sort of a halfway house on the way to the real world. Wards of the state who don’t need constant supervision, they’re able to interact with “normal” neighbors to whom, in Tom Griffin’s 1987 comic drama, they’re “The Boys Next Door.”

Nearly two years after a production by the Conejo Players, “The Boys Next Door” is running as the Santa Paula Theater Center’s first show under newly appointed artistic director David Ralphe.

To be sure, “The Boys Next Door” starts a bit slowly, as the characters are introduced. But even to those who may not find the play’s premise especially appealing, there’s much to recommend this fine production.

Ralphe, who’s directed numerous plays throughout Ventura County in the past several years, is also the director of this version. Typically, he’s assembled a top-notch cast and draws performances from them that range for the most part from “quite good” to “terrific.”

Frederic R. Helsel and George Sharperson fall into the latter category in the show’s flashiest roles, the retarded Norman Bulansky and Lucien P. Smith. Smith, it’s revealed, has the mind of a 5-year-old; Bulansky is somewhat more advanced, enough so to hold a job in a doughnut shop.

Karl Mickelson is featured as schizophrenic Barry Klemper, who fantasizes that he’s a golf professional, and Grant Tomerlin co-stars as Arnold Wiggins, described as a borderline case but--nervous and paranoid--is a few Wheaties short of a bowlful.

Low on plot, the 2 1/2-hour play shows the four men and their supervisor (Mark Alan Brush) attempting to interact with one another, somehow coping with most of the problems that arise within their limited sphere of life; in one of the play’s most affecting scenes, Norman falls in love with another mental patient, Sheila, marvelously played by Rose Blackburn.

Also notable are Kathy Meadows, uniformly effective in a number of roles, and Hardy Salzicz as Barry’s tragically uncomprehending father. Dale Champion and Don Sato appear in passing.

Besides the convincing reading of lines, Ralphe’s direction is distinguished by his and the cast’s handling of physical comedy--from the opening scene of Wiggins wrestling with bags of groceries as he tries to enter the apartment to a very funny encounter between the “boys” and a small rodent. A housecleaning scene in Act II crackles with finely tuned comic timing.

Details

* WHAT: “The Boys Next Door.”

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays; through Dec. 5.

* WHERE: Santa Paula Theater Center, 125 S. 7th St.

* COST: $10 general admission,$7.50 students and senior citizens.

* FYI: For reservations or information, call 525-4645.