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A Trip to Next Fall
Naufft’s romantic opus now on Broadway
The cast of Next Fall
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How Next Fall made it to Broadwayis a great theatrical success story. After a highly praised Off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons, critics and audiences decided it was a story worth telling in a larger venue. The Helen Hayes Theatre is now that venue, but the scenery is all that changed; the original cast remains the same.
Next Fall’s success belies the fact that it is the most innovative and unusual love story Broadway has seen in some time. After the curtain rises, we learn that a young man, Luke (Patrick Heusinger), has been hit by a taxi and is in a coma. In the hospital waiting area, five concerned souls, including his father (Cotter Smith) and mother (Connie Ray), all gather to wait for good or bad news to come. What the conservative Christian parents are unaware of is that Luke’s friend, Adam (Patrick Breen), is actually his lover. The stage is then quite literally set for a battle of religion, faith and morality.
Through flashbacks, the story of Adam and Luke’s life together becomes clear, and it’s not a relationship without problems: Adam is concerned that the very Christian Luke prays after sex, for instance. After four years, their differences come to a boil, and this is where Naufft’s message on faith begins. Adam wants to understand why anyone would have it, while Luke needs to know why Adam leads a life without God. The outside influence of friends and family only makes things more difficult.
The actors control the play on their end, turning seemingly average characters we all recognize into highly charged champions of different sides of religious and moral beliefs. Breen and Heusinger have created a touching relationship, while Smith and Ray play conservatives with polish and ease.
Geoffrey Naufft’s work is indeed deserving of the exposure and potential accolades that Broadway provides. He has seamlessly created a drama that gives way to raucous humor, with comedic situations that other works would kill, for intertwined so effortlessly with heavier matters that they almost seem unintentional or disposable. This is just at first glance, though, as no time is wasted onstage in posing a relevant question to today’s society. What that is, only the audience can decide. Judging by the standing ovations this play has received, Naufft’s message doesn’t end with the characters onstage: people have taken it to heart.
Next Fall enjoys an open-ended run as of press time. For tickets and more information, visit www.nextfallbroadway.com or call 212-239-6200.