RNS NEWS FEATURE
Broadway play explores evangelical faith, gay life
By
SOLANGE DE SANTIS
c. 2010 Religion News Service
NEW YORK (RNS) — A
new Broadway play that has been nominated for a couple of Tony awards
features a character that might seem rarer than a unicorn: a gay evangelical.
Next Fall, by Geoffrey Nauffts,
has already won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New American
Play on Broadway, and is up for Best Play and Best Director at the Tony
Awards, to be broadcast on June 13.
The production is particularly timely, given the conflicts taking place
within many denominations about the place of gay Christians and whether
the Bible condemns homosexuality.
(Another Broadway show with
faith themes that is up for a couple of Tonys is Everyday Rapture, in
which actress Sherie Rene Scott, torn between Jesus and Judy Garland,
travels a musical journey from Mennonite to Manhattanite.)
The title Next Fall, which
has the ring of Genesis about it, refers in the play to when evangelical
character Luke (played by Patrick Heusinger), plans to reveal to his
parents he’s gay.
But as the play opens it
looks like he might not get the chance.
He’s been in a severe
automobile accident and is comatose in a hospital. His partner of four
years, Adam (Patrick Breen), paces the waiting room, along with two
friends and Luke’s divorced parents.
Nauffts alternates scenes
between the hospital and flashbacks to Luke and Adam’s relationship
to tell a faith story of subtle ambiguity.
Adam, a classic urban neurotic
with no faith, first realizes his partner holds beliefs he might not
share when Luke does something weird before eating: pray.
“Is that an everyday
occurrence?” Adam wants to know. He asks whether Luke is really
gay, since all the Christians he knows consider homosexuality a sin.
Luke, a Southern boy, who
seems to have found a serene way to accept both himself and his faith,
cheerfully answers, “We’re all sinners. This one happens
to be mine.”
Since he has accepted Christ
as his saviour, he explains, he will go to heaven despite his sins.
Adam wonders if killers, such as those who murdered gay victim Matthew
Shepard, would go to heaven if they had accepted Christ, while Shepard,
who was not a Christian, would not.
“Can we change the subject?” Luke responds.
As the play develops, it
becomes apparent that Luke is more conflicted than he wishes to admit.
When his father, Butch, (Cotter Smith) phones to say he’ll be
dropping by, Luke rushes around trying to “de-gay” the apartment,
hiding the Truman Capote biography, erotic photographs, and Adam, who
he asks to disappear.
Their relationship is either
an unlikely pairing, or a testament to the enduring mysteries of love.
Adam hangs in there despite what he sees as Luke’s quirks: “He’s
afraid I’ll die before I accept Christ and we won’t be in
the afterlife together.”
Perhaps their union isn’t
so far-fetched. Among Internet postings in response to the play, one
man writing on The New York Times’ website as Brian, from Philadelphia,
said he has “endured” his partner’s “ingrained,
intractable Catholicism,” and even attended mass with him.
“It is because I love
this guy that I allow him to be what he apparently needs to be,”
he wrote.
What lifts the play above
the level of polemic is that none of the characters are caricatures,
and the acting and directing are poignant, such as when Luke asks Adam,
“Is it so wrong that I want you to go to heaven?”
Luke is clearly liberal:
he approves of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research —
areas where he would differ from many evangelicals. His father, Butch
(the character names are a bit obvious), takes a more conservative view
— marked in the play by his distrust in Darwin’s theory
of evolution.
But Butch and one of Luke’s
friends, Brandon (Sean Dugan), who is even more deeply conflicted about
homosexuality and Christianity, are not written or played as monsters.
At the play’s conclusion,
after a crisis at the hospital concerning Luke, Adam says, “finally,
I believed.”
He may be referring to his
relationship with his partner or to religious faith. He follows by telling
another character, “My name is Adam,” an intriguing reference
to the first man of the Bible and a sense of renewed life.
Is his new life enriched
by faith or blessedly free of it? Next Fall, like life, doesn’t
provide easy answers.
Copyright 2010 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No
part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written
permission.
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