THE FUNNIEST HEARTBREAKER IN TOWN! Next Fall embodies something theatergoers have been sorely missing, perhaps without knowing it, for years. A smart, sensitive, immensely appealing and utterly contemporary New York comedy with a wonderful cast.

The little-show-that-could couldn’t make it on Broadway after all.

Next Fall, American playwright Geoffrey Nauffts' Tony-nominated romantic comedy-drama that explores questions of love, sexuality, religion, family and tolerance, will play its final performance at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre July 4, according to the New York Times.

The Broadway production of Geoffrey Nauffts’ Next Fall will close on July 4 after 26 previews and 132 regular performances.

This play is on Broadway, bringing two seemingly different audiences together, and can do it without waving a rainbow flag—not that there’s anything wrong with rainbow flags.

The Broadway production Geoffrey Nauffts' acclaimed romantic comedy-drama Next Fall celebrated its 100th performance at the Helen Hayes Theatre June 8.

NEXT FALL receives nomination for Best Play and Sheryl Kaller receives nomination for Best Direction of a Play.

"We recently talked with Nauffts, an actor and artistic director of the Naked Angels company (which produced the show Off Broadway last year), about his play and its reception."

Tony nominee Sheryl Kaller was an up-and-coming director when she made the choice to leave theater for motherhood nearly 16 years ago.

Video interview with Geoffrey and Sheryl discussing their Tony nominations.

Read about Geoffrey Nauffts' reaction to his Tony nomination.

Read about Sheryl Kaller's reaction to her Tony nomination.

Check out the video of Elton John discussing "Next Fall" on THE VIEW. 

Check out this video and see what Kathie Lee thought of NEXT FALL!

COMPASSIONATE, EXPERTLY CAST, LAUGH-FILLED and ENORMOUSLY ENTERTAINING. Geoffrey Nauffts invests the play with a generosity that doesn't prejudge, embracing both the virtues and foibles of his characters. And that inclusion makes Next Fall an even richer experience.

One of the great things about religion is that it can make sex feel dirtier. But it can also fan the dual flames of shame and guilt, which tend to be a lot less fun. In Geoffrey Nauffts’s Next Fall, a committed couple wrestles with the strain that religious beliefs, or lack thereof, can put on a relationship.

If anyone should be thrilled with this year’s Tony Award nominations, it’s Sheryl Kaller, who was singled out for her direction of “Next Fall.” But for all the pleasure she took in the recognition, Ms. Kaller said, she was taken aback by a certain artistic dissonance in the overall list of nominees.

Playwright Geoffrey Nauffts conducts a cultural pulse-taking with his Tony Award-nominated play Next Fall, about the clash of faith, family, friendship and gay love.

Geoffrey Nauffts wins Outer Critics Circle's John Gassner Award (for American play, preferably by a new playwright).

‘Fresh Face’ feature on Maddie Corman.

Next Fall receives nominations for Favorite New Broadway Play, and Sean Dugan and Patrick Heusinger are nominated for Favorite Performance by a Featured Actor in a Broadway Play.

Next Fall receives two Drama Desk Award Nominations.

I was sitting in one of Broadway's smallest theaters, the Helen Hayes, on a Friday night toward the end of this Broadway season of outsize disappointments. What unfolded before me was an insightful comedy-drama on a provocative but accessible topic, the kind of play that, well, just doesn't materialize much in Times Square anymore.

Watch David Furnish’s interview on MSNBC last Thursday, discussing NEXT FALL and its direct correlation to President Obama’s recent mandate to nationwide hospitals to prohibit discrimination in granting visitation rights.

NEXT FALL receives two Outer Critics Circle Awards Nominations - Outstanding New Broadway Play and the John Gasner Award for New American Play.

The Drama League, the New York City theatre advocacy organization, announced nominations for the 76th Annual Drama League Awards, to be presented at a ceremony and luncheon May 21.

Next Fall is nominated for Distinguished Production of a Play.

Last night on Tuesday, April 13, Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay priest to be ordained a bishop in a major Christian denomination, lead a talk back with cast and audience following a performance of NEXT FALL on Broadway. Robinson currently serves as the ninth bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church. The talkback was free to anyone attending last night's performance.

Agnostic playwright Geoffrey Nauffts hopes to convert the conservative masses with Next Fall, a new Broadway drama blessed by producer power couple Elton John and David Furnish.

THE BEST NEW AMERICAN PLAY OF THE BROADWAY SEASON, Next Fall leaves you thinking about rapture and rupture. If you go, which you should, be prepared to laugh some, perhaps to cry some, and then to rise in appreciation.

"Next Fall" is a story of collisions — of beliefs and nonbeliefs, and of a taxi accident that leaves one of the characters in a coma and another questioning his faith or lack of it.  

There are a few things Patrick Heusinger doesn’t like to talk about. Religion is one. Politics is another. His personal life also tops the list (though not for the reasons you’d think). Which makes delving into his breakout role as devoutly Christian homosexual Luke in the notably religious, “unintentionally” political and deeply personal new drama Next Fall an interesting interview minefield.

Rather than use the costly automated system of some big-budget shows, the crew for the new Broadway play “Next Fall” manually slides pieces of its set into place for different scenes. An actor even helps out, at one point carrying a table across the stage.

 This new play makes its audience feel the highs and lows the characters onstage experience. It’s a shared event, and it’s wonderful.

Next Fall is a modern drama that tackles, among other things issues that have long plagued the gay community in our search for marriage equality.

Patrick Breen — star of Broadway's new play Next Fall — fills out Playbill.com's questionnaire with random facts, backstage trivia and pop culture tidbits

When Geoffrey Nauffts' "Next Fall" was playing Off-Broadway last summer, it felt as if the audience was in the hospital waiting room with the family and friends of Luke, the young gay man put in a coma by an automobile accident.

NEXT FALL, opened last night on March 11, 2010 at the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway.Of course, BroadwayWorld.com was there!

The poignant thing about Geoffrey Nauffts' "Next Fall" is that there are no villains. The characters are essentially decent people trying to connect by reconciling the differences that make them individuals.

Remember the Gilbert and Sullivan refrain about things never being what they seem and skim milk masquerading as cream? Well, Geoffrey Nauffts' Next Fall starts off appearing to be an interesting but somewhat facile comedy about a gay couple's various incompatibilities.

NEXT FALL, will open the critically acclaimed original cast on Broadway March 11, 2010 at the Helen Hayes Theatre. On March 10th, there was a VIP reception and BroadwayWorld.com was there!

Next Fall received rave reviews off Broadway and when we recently interviewed the cast, no one knew that only a few days later Elton John would be announced as a producer for the show.

By her late 30s, Maddie Corman, a mother of three who spent nearly a decade taking care of her children full time, had pretty much given up hope of ever seeing her name on a Broadway marquee.

“There are no stars in the cast of ‘Next Fall,’ so I’m doing what I can to raise its profile with my profile,” said Mr. John, who is presenting “Next Fall” with his life and business partner, David Furnish, and who recently taped promotional material for the show. “It’s so hard to have a hit play in this economy. So I’m hoping we can give it a big boost.”

A new breed of plays and musicals this season is presenting gay characters in love stories, replacing the direct political messages of 1980s and ‘90s shows like “The Normal Heart” and “Angels in America” with more personal appeals for social progress.

Listen to highlights of the February 16th edition of Q The Program from CBC Radio.  The middle section of this episode includes a discussion about NEXT FALL with David Furnish.

Maddie Corman has been waiting for this break — this Broadway break — all her life. "I discovered I wanted to be an actress pretty much on the Irvington Town Hall Theater stage that my mom was instrumental in resurrecting. To think that I'm going to Broadway now and my daughter is on that stage," she says, her voice catching, "I kinda don't have words to describe what that feels like."

Did the cast of Next Fall discuss religion when they were rehearsing the new play? The answer might surprise you. 

‘When AIDS first surfaced in the 1980s, I sat on my little celebrity throne and did nothing about it,” Elton John says.

It was a moment of rehearsal life imitating art for the two actors who portray the gay couple — Adam, an atheist, and Luke, deeply Christian — at the center of “Next Fall,” Geoffrey Nauffts’s critically lauded play.

Next Fall, American playwright Geoffrey Nauffts' acclaimed comedy-drama that explores questions of love, sexuality, religion, family and tolerance, begins its Broadway run at the Helen Hayes Theatre Feb. 16. Opening is March 11.

Gay characters in legit works have gone through several distinct phases. After centuries of invisibility, they moved centerstage in then-shocking works like "Tea and Sympathy" and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Then there were out-and-proud pieces like "Torch Song Trilogy" and "Angels in America" (subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes"), in which characters grappled with their sexual identity but often came to positive conclusions."Next Fall," which opens March 11 at the Helen Hayes Theater, represents a case study of a major shift.

 When Elton John and his life partner, David Furnish, went to see the Naked Angels production of “Next Fall” last June, they were struck by how their own concerns as a couple were reflected in the play about the love story of two gay men – and the barriers they face when an accident leaves one of them in a coma and the other without legal rights to care for his partner.

"Elton John and his partner, David Furnish, have signed on to the producing team of the upcoming Broadway transfer 'NEXT FALL,' a new play about the happiness, strains and religious differences between two gay men over the course of their five-year romantic relationship."

"Audiences rarely get to see the work that goes on behind-the-scenes in preparing a show for Broadway. The upcoming drama NEXT FALL, however, has nothing to hide."

Interviews with Patrick Heusinger, Connie Ray, Maddie Corman, and Geoffrey Nauffts.

NEXT FALL receives nomination for Outstanding New York Theater: Broadway & Off–Broadway.

"Geoffrey Naufft’s gentle, probing examination of the nature of religious faith — as embodied by a gay couple of very different beliefs — demonstrated that the conventional, well-made play can still explore unconventional territory in ways that stir depths of thought and emotion."

"Broadway will soon be home to a different kind of odd couple: the Geoffrey Nauffts play 'NEXT FALL'...”

"'NEXT FALL has it all."

"Nauffts' script is crisp and sensitive."

“FIVE STARS – THE BEST NEW PLAY OF THE SEASON. This beautifully shaped piece, produced by Naked Angels, should ideally be seen right away. This is no mere tearjerker. It's a tear-earner: NEXT FALL merits every drop.”

NEXT FALL is “artful, thoughtful and very moving. Mr. Nauffts has written the kind of gently incisive, naturalistic play that rarely materializes anymore.”

"A potent piece of political theater."