The Inheritance
Written by Matthew Lopez
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Ethel Barrymore Theatare
December 26, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
Nothing is more wonderful then curling up with a good book – a good thick book that will take you though the lives of many people and occupy many hours of page turning – and when the book is a good one the time just cannot be beat! In Matthew Lopez’s beautifully sculpted play, The Inheritance you in in for a full day’s read in the best possible sense – it is being read live right in front of you. The seven plus hours of production occupies your day from 2:00 to 10:00pm and gives you four intermissions and a dinner break. It is theatre heaven! The staging even provides 28 men sitting around the giant coffee table of a stage – all in bare feet – ready to take us through the journey.
The play is literally a novel. E.M. Forster, the celebrated English author of “Howards End,” (also A Room with a View, A Passage to India, and “Maurice,) is the framework that the story is modeled after. Of course it takes this gay journey and completely brings it out of the closet and sets it in our world spanning the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s – and right up to the defeat of Hilary Clinton’s presidential bid. And even more wonderfully, E.M. Forester is a character in the play that is leading this group of diverse gay men to create their own story and try to make sense of their very rich history! In particular, I enjoyed the way the playwright has the characters drop in and out of third person. It is an exciting way to persevere the “novel quality” of the play and still work it into a first person theatrical event.
At the core of the play there is a newly found couple that is struggling to stay alive as New Yorkers, young artists and new lovers. Around them are a variety of gay men that present the struggles of marriage, pending parenthood, HIV/AIDS, monogamy and simply surviving the city. The first of the two plays doesn’t offer much in the way of conflict or action. It is more about getting to know the men and enjoy their lives BUT BUT BUT then the first part gets very serious and very theatrical – in a way that I would love to share with you – but would never want to spoil the surprise that awaits you at the end of the first part. Trust me you will stagger out of the theatre with the magic that only live theatre can bring to the moment.
The second play, it must be said, is not as explosively emotional as the first, but it does give us more time to spend with the men we have grown to love and does give us a big challenge for gay men to form a brotherhood to survive the battle of AIDS and to keep loving one another.
The Inheritance is bound to be compared with the equally mammoth work, Angels in America – and it will be found wanting – but The Inheritance is a magnificent homage to the victims and survivors of the age of AIDS. You gotta see this one!