An incredible piece about the deep struggle to work through grief, pain and connecting after so much loss. Powerful and well done.

I loved the spare and lyrical quality of Gershman's dialogue. He renders several truly compelling characters, and it is a testament to his skill as a writer that we get a good sense of the mostly-absent Sam throughout. All of the characters radiate with melancholy, heartache, and a yearning to connect--Paolo in particular. He is a compelling central figure around which the other characters orbit. This exploration of grief, trauma, betrayal, and letting go steadily builds to its inevitable end. The final moment is a lovely and poignant tableau. I'd love to see it on its feet.

One of Gershman's chief talents is the honesty with which his stories are told; he refuses to disguise even the hardest of truths from his audiences. In THE WAITING GAME, he brings together queer men in scenes that are distinguished by their verisimilitude, showing gay men as they are, not as we want or imagine them to be. His characters wrestle with the latent question of how to make community in an age after the AIDS epidemic, struggling with generational melancholia and interpersonal mourning. Wryly mixing the erotic with the surreal, Gershman's play packs a poetic, psychological, and passionate punch.