By Emily Schulten

Waterfront Playhouse’s current show, Next Fall, is a deep and considerate look at relationships, faith, fear, and loss. Writer Geoffrey Nauffts’s award-winning play approaches religion’s complications of already difficult decisions, and this cast and crew come together to do this with grace and deliberation.

The play opens in a hospital waiting room and through flashback fills in the audience on the relationship each person there has with Luke, who has just come out of emergency surgery after falling and sustaining an injury to his head. Trey Gerrald plays Luke, who is in a long-term relationship with Adam, played by Adam McLaughlin. Gerrald and McLaughlin’s portrayal of this relationship is impressive in that the audience can feel and relate to the struggle they have when confronting the other’s views.

Murphy Davis directs the cast of Next Fall through the very different tones of the present day and the past, from the time that Luke and Adam meet until the day before Luke’s accident. Throughout, each character is at different times coming to terms with how to interact with loved ones who have – often hopelessly – different views and values. McLaughlin shifts through scenes of love & intimacy, frustration, grief, and anger in a manner that allows the audience to feel the many different ways that people experience a crisis of faith. Through these shifts in time, the strain of the impending loss is cut by the humor and tenderness that McLaughlin and Gerrald bring to their roles.

Luke’s mother, Arlene, and father, Butch, are played by Annie Miners and Bob Bowersox, respectively. They are in denial about their son’s sexuality and forced to confront the lifestyle Luke has kept from them as their son lies in a coma. Bowersox masterfully portrays Butch, who set in his conservative and judgmental ways. Despite that Butch is often cruel in his beliefs, he also demonstrates that there is goodness and an ultimate forgiveness in even the most stubborn of men. Miners delivers the role of Arlene with a comedic timing that helps absorb some of the weight of the subject matter of this piece.

Nicole Nurenburg fills the role of Holly, a long-time friend of the couple who supports each of Luke’s loved ones as they slowly confront the tragedy at hand. Kaleb Morgan Smith makes his debut at Waterfront in the role of Brandon, the much quieter friend of Luke’s who shares his faith and sexuality but has made different choices than Luke has regarding how to live in the contradictory space of Christianity, sin, and homosexuality.

Thematically, the play centers around faith in each act and in each character’s development. The references to being trapped – in a coma, in a cage, in a job, in a family, in a secret – illustrate the ultimate necessity for our relationships and our beliefs, despite their opposition. It is testament to this cast and production team that these relationships and tensions are made so vivid on this stage.

Next Fall will be at the Waterfront Playhouse through February 28, 2015, and all performances begin at 8 p.m. You can purchase tickets through the box office at 305-294-5015 or online at www.waterfrontplayhouse.org.