Share this
Twitter
Myspace
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Facebook
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
TagsWeepy new Broadway comedy-drama mixes trite substance with suds
BY MICHAEL SOMMERS
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
BROADWAY REVIEW
"Next Fall" enjoyed favorable reviews and an extended off-Broadway run last summer at Playwrights Horizons. Now under the aegis of Elton John and David Furnish among others, Geoffrey Nauffts' new play has moved a few blocks to Broadway, where it opened Thursday at the Helen Hayes Theatre.
From the sniffles pervading the auditorium, apparently some people are moved deeply by this comedy-drama-weeper. Not me. At least not in the way the playwright intends. Frankly I could scarcely wait to move myself out of the theater and into a martini.
The modest production trimly directed by Sheryl Kaller is all right as far as the acting and staging goes.
The play, however, is shamefully derivative claptrap regarding an unlikely gay couple. It reeks with such tired business as clueless, bigoted parents, the obligatory ditsy-though-wise gal pal and even a (non-AIDS) sickroom confrontation.
This is meant to be a cutting-edge love story of today? Really?
A waiting room in a Manhattan hospital is the key location, where friends and family await news about Luke (Patrick Huesinger), seriously injured and comatose after a taxi crash. From that critical point the play switches back and forth over the previous five years.
The next scene shows the first meeting between cute actor-waiter Luke and Adam (Patrick Breen), a nice if neurotic teacher some 15 years his senior. Luke is a sunny Christian soul so shadowed by his gay being that he prays after having sex. Needy Adam is a snarky non-believer and a mild hypochondriac. Their improbable opposites-attract romance somehow sticks and so they soon move in together.
As the years fly by, Adam is irked by Luke's inability to tell his long-divorced and distant parents Butch (Cotter Smith) and Arlene (Connie Ray) that he's gay and sharing a partnership with - oh, please, life's too short: Let's not dish out more of this moldy stew except to note that another gay Bible-toter (Sean Dugan) is muddled among Nauffts' elements as well as the couple's best girlfriend (Maddie Corman), owner of a candle shop and several yoga mats.
His stale, hackneyed contents aside, the writer ably crafts sitcom-level material such as the "Will & Grace" style bit when Luke frantically "de-gays" the couple's apartment in advance of a parental visit. But to shore up his teary story's message, Nauffts lazily resorts to a brazen lifting from a 1938 classic regarding the importance of savoring life as it happens. ("I keep thinking about that play Luke was in ... that ‘Our Town'," says his mother by way of introduction to the paraphrase.) Let's hope Thornton Wilder's estate claims a portion of Nauffts' royalties.
Of course, a terribly conventional piece of fudge like "Next Fall" is just the sort of play Wilder was out to supersede 70 years ago. It will be sad indeed if such trash gets taken seriously on Broadway today.
"Next Fall" continues an open-end run at the Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 W. 44th St., New York. Call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.nextfallbroadway.com.
RECENTLY BY MICHAEL SOMMERS
‘Top Secret' Pentagon Papers story gets staged as a radio play
‘When the Rain Stops Falling' explores our missing links
Christopher Walken spooks out ‘A Behanding in Spokane'
Abigail Breslin dukes it out as young Helen Keller in ‘The Miracle Worker'
Shakespeare + gunpowder = illuminating ‘Equivocation'
John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle do their best as ‘Mr. & Mrs. Fitch'
‘Clybourne Park' surveys how racial attitudes have changed (or not)
Gay ‘Boys in the Band' host their ‘60s party in a real penthouse
Ethan Hawke wisely stages ‘A Lie of the Mind'
‘The Pride' illuminates gay conflicts then and now
All too few pleasures distinguish ‘Measure for Measure'
‘Happy Now?' studies a working wife and mom's frazzled life
Romantic ‘Fanny' returns to New York in fine concert form
Resolute Laura Linney makes certain ‘Time Stands Still' on Broadway
