I’m a big supporter of new plays – I love that sense of anticipation and discovery when you’re waiting for the curtain to rise on a play you’ve never seen or read before. As an audience member, I bring with me to the theater my preoccupations and my priorities, my opinions and my biases, so the new plays that attract me the most are the ones that traffic in big, global themes, that recognize they are part of a bigger world and enthusiastically engage with it: August: Osage County and its generational dysfunction or Ruined and its socio-political gender struggles (ok, so I just mentioned two Pulitzer Prize winners that received their world premieres in Chicago. Yeah, so shoot me). I’m quite skittish then with plays that seem to be to be too introspective, too preoccupied with their emotional responses, plays that a New York Times theater review I once read characterized as “hothouse” plays – delicate, sensitive, bent over by the weight of their own brooding. And really, really focused on their playwrights’ worlds, rather than a world at large. In Chicago last weekend, I saw the Gift Theatre Company world premiere production of Andrew Hinderaker’s Suicide, Incorporated; in New York this past week, I managed to catch the Tony-nominated Next Fall by Geoffrey Naults. I laud the playwrights for releasing new voices to the cosmos; both, though, lacked the wondrous edge, the sock-to-the-gut experience that I look for in the best new plays. And in Next Fall’s case, “best new play” is a phrase I would never, in a million years, attach to it.
Suicide, Incorporated has an intriguing premise: a guy gets himself hired by a company that helps people write their suicide notes in order to stop the clients from killing themselves. I think Hinderaker is a playwright to watch– he’s quirky like Sarah Ruhl, but with a fresher and more insightful voice; he is confident like Adam Rapp but sweeter and with less grungy baggage. I like the fact that he doesn’t shy away from pauses, ellipses, and unfinished sentences which can help the play more than any piece of dialog can. But Hinderaker is also a young playwright whose better work, I think, is still ahead of him; despite director Jonathan Berry’s usual intelligent pacing and steady hand, Suicide, Incorporated drags through its intermissionless 80 minutes. There are scenes that are really, really good – Michael Patrick Thornton’s two masterful, authentically heartfelt monologues as the suicide-letter client, Norm; the staff meeting that is eccentrically funny; the play’s ending that has the joyous tinge of friendship and redemption. But for the most part, the play meanders along in its own despondent current. I don’t think it sheds any light at all on why suicide is chosen as a viable alternative by some people; I think both Norm’s and the lead character Josh’s brother Tommy’s reasons to take their lives are pretty shallow (Sexual problems with your wife? Being ignored by your brother who happens to be supporting both of you? C’mon, there are bigger, worse problems in the world, people are getting blown up in Afghanistan, for crying out loud!). Despite excellent performances from the cast all around, I don’t feel any sympathy with these characters whose self-involvement is head-scratching. As it is right now, Suicide, Incorporated is a pretty slight play that with a little more honing and fleshing out can be more impactful.
The reason to see Suicide, Incorporated, then, are the performances, and particularly that of Thornton, who I didn’t realize has become a semi-regular on ABC’s Private Practice. I’ve always admired his performances, from The Gift’s The Last Days of Judas Iscariot to Steppenwolf’s The Elephant Man, but his Norm in this play is quite the achievement. I’ve always found him to be naturally effortless, without any distracting actorly mannerisms, but his Norm here is so real and authentic, it fits like a comfortable, well-worn sweater. When he talks about meeting his wife at the office Christmas party and falling in love, Thornton is radiant; in the second act when he talks about why they broke up, he is grieving, wounded, unforgiving of himself. Thornton is well-matched by Josh Rollins, who’s like a more intense Bradley Cooper with sharp acting chops. Rollins wonderfully paints Josh’s guilt, deep sadness, and fierce, almost desperate, intent to save. It’s a beautiful performance.
Where do I even start with Next Fall? As a gay man, I was intrigued with its love affair between an older gay guy, who’s an agnostic, and a younger gay guy who’s an evangelical Christian. But instead of a provocative, intellectually engaging portrayal of the conflict between your gender-identity and your religious beliefs, and how they play out in a realistically-drawn same sex relationship, Next Fall gives you a mildly annoying, somewhat ho-hum, quite outdated, gay version of a Woody Allen fantasia, where the neurotic, hypochondriac, self-indulgent, plain-looking older guy, Adam, bafflingly romances the hot, gym-bodied, nurturing, beatifically patient younger guy, Luke, who just happens to believe in heaven and hell and the end of the world. Naults doesn’t say anything, ANYTHING, about how gay Christians can live in a world where they identify as gay but also believe in homosexuality as a sin, a difficult, perturbing struggle. He doesn’t fully develop the clash in Adam’s and Luke’s relationship; the clash is mostly Adam dishing bitter old queen quips about hell and the afterlife, while Luke stands by looking adorably upset. There’s a missed opportunity in tackling issues in gay marriage when Adam isn’t able to see the comatose Luke (who was hit by a speeding taxi) because he isn’t family – instead, Naults writes quite the melodramatic scene where Adam sneaks into Luke’s room, curls up beside him on the hospital bed, and is found by Luke’s right-wing Christian father, which then ignites something close to Armageddon. Patrick Breen, who plays Adam, and Patrick Huesinger, who plays Luke, are good actors, so I think it’s Naults fault, not theirs, that this particular same-sex relationship lacks the electricity and intimacy of a real relationship. This neutered, de-sexualized gay relationship is so infuriating. Hey, I’m not saying Naults should have written Queer as Folk-type makeout scenes played au naturel (and I’m sure the retirees from Oklahoma who comprise most of Broadway’s current audience wouldn’t take kindly to those anyway), but Adam and Patrick come off more as casual neighbors than domestic partners. And, really, why is this play two and a half hours long? The play, because it’s not saying anything significant or engaging, drags and drags, so much so that I wanted someone to just belt something out of Gypsy. Broadway websites reported this week that Next Fall will close July 4, having lost money for its investors (which included Elton John). With writing this weak, I don’t blame people for staying away in droves.
Suicide, Incorporated is at the Gift Theatre Company, 4802 Milwaukee Ave. in Jefferson Park, until July 25. Next Fall is at the Helen Hayes Theater, 240 W. 44th Street in New York City, until July 4.
Tags: Broadway, Gift Theatre Company
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