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A hospital waiting room has the potential for suffocatingly high drama, but Geoffrey Nauffts’s smart New York-set play has impressive subtlety.
When Luke has an accident, his boyfriend Adam rushes to hospital to be faced with Luke’s parents – one a pilled-up mess, the other a Bible-bashing brute – who don’t know their son is gay and wouldn’t like it if they did. Adam is forced to step back from his relationship with Luke when family members only are called in to the bedside.
But Nauffts swiftly moves the action out of the hospital and into flashbacks to tell the story of how Adam (Charlie Condou) and Luke (Martin Delaney) met, fell in love and disagreed about God. Where Adam isn’t a believer, Luke is a fervent Christian, who reconciles his sexuality and faith rather bizarrely and a touch cynically by happily ‘sinning’ whenever he wants, but ensuring his place in the afterlife is kept warm simply by asking for forgiveness each time he is bad.
The play wrestles with broad themes of love, religion and loss, but does so with a lightness of touch and much wit. Apart from some slightly questionable American accents, there are good performances. Condou’s Adam, brow constantly furrowed, is refreshingly nuanced, while Nancy Crane’s Arlene is excellent as Luke’s mother. David Woodhead’s one-room set doubles as a hospital and everywhere else: it’s simple, efficient and an important part of Luke Sheppard’s slick, fast-paced production.
Most of the time, ‘Next Fall’ seems to be heading somewhere interesting, but the play and its ideas fizzle out towards the end. The way Luke lives, his head fixed toward heaven but his heart with Adam, feels entirely improbable, his unflinching faith almost ridiculous. How we ultimately feel about Luke’s attitudes and choices doesn’t destroy a strong, poignant evening of drama – far from it. But we’re left needing something more to really understand them.