Next Fall

In a New York hospital waiting room, a disparate group waits for the outcome of emergency surgery on young, gorgeous Luke (Mark Davis), victim of a random car accident.  Luke’s father, Butch (Paul Robertson) has flown up from Florida.  Luke’s Mom, Arlene (Kaarin Fairfax), absent for most of his growing-up but now repentant, fills every silence with chatter, driving Butch crazy.  Brandon (James Biasetto), a taciturn young man, sits reading a worn Bible.  We won’t find out why Brandon is there until Act 2.  Holly (Sharon Davis), Luke’s employer at her scented candle and tchotchkes shop, waits anxiously for Adam (Darrin Redgate), who is Luke’s lover and partner – unbeknown or perhaps unacknowledged by the parents.  When Adam arrives – he’s been at a reunion – he’s frantic and the more so as he meets a wall of hostility.  Luke, it seems, has never ‘come out’, so Adam is not ‘family’.  It is this last hidden – or rejected - fact that is the central sadness of Next Fall.  

The vigil is the device that brings these people together.  In a series of flashbacks, in near sit-com style in a sharp contrast to the hospital, we learn of Adam and Luke’s meeting, falling in love, moving in together and, despite the odds, maintaining a relationship that’s lasted close to five years.  Despite what odds?  Aside from the fact that Luke is a hunk and Adam is a nerd, if not a dweeb, and Luke is twenty-something and Adam forty-something, Luke is a dead certain fundamentalist Christian and Adam is a hypochondriac atheist having a mid-life crisis.

In this production, the past (apartment, rooftop and so on) and the present (hospital, a park) are separated by a floor-to-ceiling green curtain, which is opened, then closed, then opened… The design is by James Lew.  In mounting a more or less ‘naturalistic’ play with constant juxtapositions of short scenes, might it not be less distracting to employ a less naturalistic set, and rely more on the audience’s imagination and lighting changes?  As it is, lighting designer Megz Evans can’t do much more than light this area, then that…

Here is a dedicated and accomplished cast attempting to mine the depths of this sadly still topical material.  The result, on opening night, sad to say, was somehow listless, flat and slow-paced.  There seemed to be little edge or energy – too much air around the words, so to speak.  Things improved somewhat in the second act, but there was still a misplaced ‘seriousness’ to proceedings that was enervating.  The characters that come off best are, strangely, the simplest.  Mr Robertson avoids making Butch a ‘type’, and gives authority and gravitas to his otherwise black-and-white beliefs.  Mr Biasetto doesn’t get to say too much until Act 2, but he gives pathos and bitterness in equal measure to tortured, jealous Brandon.  Holly is almost an ‘added’ character – the play, really, could do without her, but that is no reflection on Ms Davis who gives Holly a non-judgemental sweetness.  

Otherwise, I wonder at some of director Peter Blackburn’s choices.  For example, Adam is a type of nebbish familiar to us from New York comedies by, say, Woody Allen, but as Mr Redgate (who also happens to be a producer of the show) plays him, he’s a sort of quizzical, one-note kvetcher – and Mr Davis’ Luke (the most under-written of all the characters) never seems to laugh at Adam’s jokes.  No sense of humour?  And a five-year relationship?  Or, then again, there’s Arlene.  The text introduces her thus: ‘Arlene enters like a tornado.’  Ms Fairfax enters like a soft – if persistent - breeze, which enhances her natural appealing persona, and her innate sense of comic timing ensures that she gets a lot of laughs.  Arlene’s backstory confessional monologue in Act 2 might justify this softer, more tentative approach, but it reflects the director’s apparent overall approach to the material which avoids the rhythms and bite that it offers.

Over my many years of writing and developing scripts, there has always been someone whose contribution or purpose has been to ‘explore the characters’ – a suggestion that usually makes me uneasy because it results in static scenes and illustration.  Can’t we get a sense of the characters from what they want and what they do about that?  But ‘explore the characters’ is what Next Fall does – or at least explores the characters’ beliefs, but to an unsatisfying conclusion.  All the characters have beliefs, but the collision of those beliefs doesn’t generate much drama.  No one really tries to persuade anyone and no one is persuaded so their beliefs just are – stated, out there and perhaps ‘interesting’, or perhaps not.

Adam continuously (over four years, or so we are meant to believe) questions Luke’s faith, but stolid Luke is immoveable and goes on saying grace before meals and praying for forgiveness after sex, in a way that rather strains credibility – that is, that their relationship survives and involves more than sex.  For Adam, Luke’s fundamentalist Christianity per se is more a source of bemusement and irritation than any real obstacle.  The real pain comes from the fact that because of that Christianity and, no doubt, some deep-rooted ideas of what a ‘man’ is, Luke has never come out to his parents and therefore never told them about Adam and what Adam means to him.

What we are left with here is a situation in which beliefs and value systems divide and exclude people.  There can be no resolution.  As Mark Twain (I think) said, ‘You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.’  Nevertheless, Mr Nauffts’ attempts a resolution that is either a sad instance of self-delusion or a feel-good tack-on.  The poignancy of Next Fall comes from what was not or is not said.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Darrin Redgate