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NEXT FALL
at the
Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles
November 2 - December 4, 2011
 
 
Next Fall
at the
Geffen Theatre Los Angeles
Jeff Fahey has just been set to star in the Los Angeles production of NEXT FALL at the Geffen Theatre......this will mark Jeff's return to the stage after many years. Mr. Fahey starred with Albert Finney and Kevin Anderson in the West End production of ORPHANS which was a Steppenwolf Production that Gary Sinise directed. NEXT FALL opens in Los Angeles on November 2nd and is scheduled to run until December 4th 2011. 
 
 

Theater Review: "Next Fall"

 

By LENIKA CRUZ

Published November 7, 2011, 12:01 am in A&E, Theater & Arts

Next Fall
Geffen Playhouse
Through Dec. 4, 2011

 

 

 

When a play begins in a hospital waiting room, the audience may instinctively brace itself for a story it has seen countless times. When a play presents two gay lovers, one Christian and the other atheist, the audience may lick its lips for a meaty philosophical debate with a modern twist. When a play does both, certain cliches lock into place that lead the audience to think it knows exactly what kind of story will follow.

 

Despite such conventions, the Geffen Playhouse’s newest production “Next Fall” offers a sad, yet hopeful meditation on the way people’s obsession with overarching life philosophies often distracts them from the life they are living – a message the audience may ironically (or fittingly) miss if it becomes blindsided by its own premature assumptions about the play.

“Next Fall” begins with a jarring orchestral recreation of a car crash that lasts no more than 10 seconds before hot blue spotlights burst to reveal two silhouetted figures in a New York City hospital lobby. Brandon (Ken Barnett) and Holly (Betsy Brandt) fidget as they wait for news of their friend Luke’s (James Wolk) surgery. Luke’s mother (Lesley Ann Warren) teeters into the room as though propelled by a gas tank of amphetamines. Her chatter is meant to be optimistic, but it feels out of place.

 

“Next Fall” moves slowly, often failing to clearly explain the relationships between characters. When Luke’s boyfriend of four years, Adam (Geoffrey Nauffts, also the playwright), sweeps onto the stage, his presence feels unassertive and vague, leaving the audience to question his attachment to Luke.

 

Flashbacks change all of that. The play’s non-linear handling of time dips smoothly into past and present, but doesn’t hinge on shocking last-minute revelations. On the night they meet, Adam is a self-effacing 40-year-old candle salesman, and Luke is a young waiter and aspiring actor who not only performs the Heimlich maneuver on Adam, but also has the confidence (or naivete) to admit that he did it just so he could hold him.

 

The idyllic afterglow of the couple’s first morning-after shatters when Adam catches Luke praying before a meal. An unapologetic atheist, Adam interrogates Luke about his beliefs on the afterlife only to receive some hard answers.

 

While disguised as a tragedy about two men with irreconcilable views of the world, “Next Fall” has nothing to do with God or science. It portrays Luke as a big-hearted man whose faith both protected him against his mother’s absence and held him close to his doting father, Butch (Jeff Fahey), a gruff Tallahassee native with an affinity for homophobic and racist slurs .

 

For all his epithet-hawking, Butch emerges as a sympathetic character. Played flawlessly by Fahey, Butch buries his beliefs so he can tell Luke that he acted brilliantly in “Huck Finn,” ignore Adam’s provocations on the topic of evolution and sit in a waiting room with the woman who abandoned his son. At the end, Fahey alone bears the most heartrending scene of the play.

 

Only after it ends does “Next Fall” appear deceptively simple and sincere. But its initial promise of intensity turns lukewarm with conversations that last too long and mild attempts at commentary on religion that never quite go anywhere.

 

For all its understated seriousness, “Next Fall” has an incredible sense of humor – at times dry or caustic, while at other times jokes feel clipped out of a guilty pleasure sitcom. Regardless, laughs abound.

 

Sure, “Next Fall” insists on a set-up that one may foggily recall from some “Grey’s Anatomy” episode. Sure, the story of lovers with warring belief systems feels pre-Homeric. But “Next Fall” dares the audience to reject its preconceived expectations at the risk of missing out on the play’s message. The play neither pontificates, nor holds a political agenda. It is not about left versus right or gay versus straight.

 

It is about how people exaggerate the importance of those oppositions and sacrifice love in the process, but it is also about learning the lesson that while next fall might never come, the certainty of the here and now can (and will) suffice.

 

 

Theater review: 'Next Fall' at Geffen Playhouse


The Geffen Playhouse production of “Next Fall,” Geoffrey Nauffts’ drama about a gay couple with stark religious differences — one’s a fundamentalist Christian, the other’s a sarcastic agnostic — proceeds with the somber discretion of someone walking into church after the sermon has begun. The play has many humorous moments, particularly when urban wisecracks are pitted against redneck ripostes. But an autumnal light bathes even the comic aspects of the work, toning down the banter and subduing the punch lines.

It’s quite a different experience from the play’s amped-up Broadway production, though the director, Sheryl Kaller, is the same. Perhaps the biggest difference is in the portrayal of Adam, a neurotic New Yorker who falls in love with Luke, a sweet, openhearted younger man who silently says grace before every meal and believes his sexuality is a sin.

PHOTOS: 'Next Fall'

Nauffts, an actor-turned-playwright, assays this godless role and steers it in a surprisingly low-key direction. (Patrick Breen fueled the play on Broadway by heightening Adam’s high-strung histrionics. Nauffts opts for a more modest portrait of a guy who, no matter how he’s played, is a bit of a self-involved know-it-all.)

The quieter approach draws out the sensitivity of Nauffts’ writing, but the play has a problem that can’t be solved by actor interpretation alone. The essential conflict is only as deep as the characters, and Adam, a substitute teacher, and Luke (James Wolk), an aspiring actor, aren’t especially profound. Their relationship works to the extent that they aren’t the most searching or self-aware people. But what allows them to be relatively happy bedfellows doesn’t make them fascinating representatives of the spiritual-secular divide. “Next Fall” is generally absorbing, often amusing and ultimately touching. It’s just not very enlightening.

 

The story takes place after a car crash has put Luke in the intensive care unit of a Jewish hospital. (In a play rife with sectarian uneasiness, the religion of the institution isn’t immaterial.) Luke’s divorced parents have flown up from the South in a fluster. Arlene (Lesley Ann Warren), who went AWOL for most of Luke’s childhood, can’t stop her incessant chatter, aware that she must seem “like some kind of hillbilly” to these New York friends of her son. Butch (Jeff Fahey), Luke’s take-charge father from Florida, barrels in with his doctrinaire morality and intolerance.

 

Already holding vigil in the hospital waiting room are Holly (Betsy Brandt), owner of a candle shop where Luke works, and Brandon (Ken Barnett), an uptight, Bible-clutching gay man who won’t allow himself to love someone of the same sex. By the time Adam (who was out of town at a reunion) arrives, the opposing halves of Luke’s world have been mapped out in neon.

 

The nub of the drama calls to mind AIDS plays from a generation ago: Butch, who refuses to see that his semi-closeted son is gay, doesn’t recognize Adam’s place in Luke’s life. Only “family” is admitted into the room where he is hooked up to machines, and for Butch, Adam hardly qualifies.

 

Paralyzed in this moment of crisis, the play flashes back in time to trace the evolution of Adam and Luke’s relationship. We eavesdrop on their contrived hook-up at a party. We are made privy to their squabbles after they move in together. (Adam naturally can’t help starting a row over Luke’s habit of praying for forgiveness after sex.) We watch Luke desperately try to “de-gay” the apartment before his father pays a visit.

The production moves gracefully between the past and the present, thanks to the subtle magic of Wilson Chin’s set, which transforms with minimal shifts from a generic lounge to a cramped Manhattan one-bedroom. Kaller’s direction isn’t especially dynamic, but dramatic pressure is steadily applied.

 

It’s a capable cast, with Warren’s emotionally clamorous Arlene stealing whatever scene she’s in, Fahey turning Butch into more than just an evangelical brute and Wolk emphasizing both the simplicity and generosity of Luke’s nature. (Brandt and Barnett convincingly flesh out their supporting roles.)

Occasionally, the actors seem to lose track of the urgency of the medical emergency confronting their characters. I have vivid recollections of such a hospital waiting room scene when a friend of mine was in a life-threatening car accident, and his lover was in no state to make quips the way Nauffts’ Adam languidly tosses them off.

 

Nauffts’ performance at times has that low-impact effect of a songwriter who decides to perform his own hit made famous by another singer. Overfamiliarity with a work can sometimes lead to a lackluster rendering of it. The natural shadings Nauffts supplies are appreciated, but more theatrical potency would have given the production greater momentum.

 

But all credit to the company for managing to go on with the show after the death of Geffen founder and producing director Gil Cates. This offering, worthwhile despite my reservations, is a reminder of Cates’ commitment to diversity and his understanding of the theater’s role in the unending battle for social justice.

 

 

 

Not a Dry Eye in the House: 'Next Fall' at Geffen Playhouse


Geoffrey Nauffts and James Volk in 'Next Fall' (photo by Michael Lamont).

 

Geoffrey Nauffts' dramatic tear-jerker, Next Fall brings the emotional crux of the Gay Rights Movement to the Geffen Playhouse. Presenting homophobic family dynamics, tragic endings, and a realistic religious debate that tackles the incongruities and salves of faith, the play features charged performances, careful direction, and a bold script.

 

The Next Fall cast gives admirable, commanding performances. In addition to writing the play, Nauffs leads the cast as Adam, a sharp and anxious protagonist. His intimacy with the script is evident through an intuitive, natural rendering that envelopes the wired energy of New York. James Wolk is utterly endearing and full of warmth as Adams's partner Luke. His characterization effectively conveys subtle, yet undeniable internal conflict, brimming just under the surface of blind faith and fear. Jeff Fahey beautifully carries the most realistic and unlikable role of the play, that of Luke's homophobic father, Butch. Fahey pits dichotomies against each other -- confusion and knowing; disgust and love; strength and worry -- harnessing energy until his final explosive, heart-breaking scene.

 

Betsy Brandt, Ken Barnett, and Lesley Ann Warren portray characters that are somewhat shallow throughout the first act, but as the roles open emotionally during Act II, their true talents surface revealing different shades of compassion and understanding despite fragility.

 

Under the direction of Sheryl Kaller, Next Fall moves smoothly and coherently through time and place without distraction. Kaller ensures that realism is not sacrificed for the sake of telling a story well, and vice versa, creating a perfectly balanced staging. Set design by Wilson Chin thoughtfully reflects the duality of the play's theme as he transforms and reframes central objects.