NEXT FALL BY Geoffrey Nauffts.
Suggest you read the sypnosis of the play on a proper review first, as this is my opinion only..
http://nymag.com/arts/theater/reviews/64844/
I sound like a bad reviewer when I say -I literally laughed and teared through most of the play.
As an anthropology major with a love of evolution biology, the conversations whether apes has souls, when it's appropriate to pray, and how can a person who has done great ills be received in heaven for believing, and those who have been kind -do not, if they don't believe truly struck a cord, as I have had many of the same conversations. It was cathartic to see MY beliefs portrayed in a gentle way.
I enjoyed that the playwright adding a "third" religious philosophy, one of urban American -the yoga chanting spiritualist. They are never included in the debate, but I know many in California.
However the play felt too heavy handed, and slightly over dramatic over all. This was especially apparent when Luke's mother confessed to have ended in jail for six months over drug charges seemed forced. But what she said, about how her son put her feet with hers and asked if he could glue them together so she won't even go away again had me crying like a mother of a boy who likes to put his feet with hers daily as my son and I do. Emotions aside, I still found the monologue irrelevant.
Despite its weaknesses, it is a play worth seeing, both because it's generally good, enjoyable, and thought provoking.
But I confess, as a "non believer," I felt sold out near the end, with a pithy sentence that hinted when faced with death there is no choice but to transform.
That I don't believe. A follower of the scientific method -an athetist's conviction, can be just as strong, and as ready to face death as a devoted Christian because when the time is here, it will be the end and we know that our time has reached its conclusion.
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