“There's plenty of waiting around but not much payoff in Gershman's new drama...The play exists in a cloud of anomie...Giving a banal situation a same-sex twist doesn't add anything of interest...If Wright's direction feels stilted and the performances wooden, you can blame the script...’The Waiting Game’ could easily apply to the audience, who spend seventy minutes waiting for something like drama to show up; like the characters onstage, they are likely to be disappointed.”
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"Welcome to 'The Waiting Game,' a play by Charles Gershman, which has the makings for a meaningful drama, but never really amounts to much. A large part of the problem is the nondescript and dull staging, as directed by Nathan Wright, which doesn't really bring any of the characters alive. And then there's the writing, also nondescript and dull, does nothing to make the characters real--nor does it contain anything resembling exposition."
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“As directed with a crafty focused style of tight movement and dynamic interplay by Nathan Wright, the slow hypnotic dive into the abyss of grief and loss takes its time assembling the pieces and the game board of life and death...'The Waiting Game' works as a study, but the conclusions aren’t exactly clear. Which I guess is what life, love, loss, and release is, in a nutshell."
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“The play is about the mechanisms that people use to cope with loss...The problem is that we never discover how those people feel...The characters seem very two-dimensional lacking emotional depth and not fully developed. The actors do their job but there is not enough to grab onto in order to transcend the material. The characters...are not at all likable, therefore it is difficult for the audience feel much empathy."
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"It’s only mid-February, but I have already suffered through what I expect will be a strong contender for the worst play I see this year...This situation may sound promising, but the action is as comatose as Sam...After 65 long, long minutes, the play grinds to a halt...The actors are convincing in their roles. For some reason they perform barefoot...Unless seeing four hunky men is enough to make your evening, you can skip this one."
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“Gershman takes a more daring tack in his new play ‘The Waiting Game’ his ‘hero’, Paolo, is a meth-smoking lodestar of promiscuity...Gershman deserves credit for taking a darker approach, but the result is puzzling and unsatisfying...The melodrama is thick, downbeat and contrived...There’s little the actors can do to salvage this goulash...The gay milieu doesn’t enliven the action much.”
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“When given its due, ‘The Waiting Game’ is a rewarding and excellent piece of theater...Gershman has crafted a unique vision at the crossroads of drug use, sex, marriage and HIV status. Wright has staged it interestingly and pulled out wonderful performances from the actors. It could have used a bit more dialog and a little less distracting stage business...But those are minor nits which are lost in the unique voice ‘The Waiting Game’ brings.”
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"An unsettling glimpse into the dynamics of a destructive love triangle and its aftereffects...The play does a wonderful job exploring power dynamics and the longing for commitment...Behind the stage, where Sam lingers in his purgatory, words pulled from the dialogue appear on a backdrop and begin to scramble, a literal view of how communication becomes skewed and fragmented...An unusual way to dramatize souls in limbo."
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