AISLE SAY New York

THE INHERITANCE

by Matthew Lopez
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
Official Website

Reviewed by David Spencer

December 2019

I asked a colleague of mine, who saw The Inheritance by Matthew Lopez a few days before I would, if he liked it and what he thought of it. (For the record, I try not to ask such things prior to reviewing, but in some instances curiosity will get the better of me.) He reported that he liked it very much, and added, “You know what it is? It’s The Boys in the Band for the current generation.” By which I took his meaning as another approach at a “gathering” play; but this one presenting much more nuanced and complex archetypes than the one-from-each-column compendium of gay-standard categories that informed the approach of Mart Crowley’s excellent pre-Stonewall play of 1968.

After I myself saw The Inheritance, I thought my friend’s appraisal was close, but off by a few understandable degrees; understandable because he wouldn’t have known the much more obscure play with which The Inheritance resonated much more closely. And that’s the 2002 sequel to The Boys in the Band, called The Men from the Boys, set 35 years later. In it, the surviving friends of the original birthday party gather again at Michael’s apartment after the funeral of Larry (the philanderer). In place of the two drop-in guests whose story threads ended with the first play, Crowley introduces three much younger men. And much of the play dramatizes the rift between them and the older generation, whom they have trouble perceiving as the pioneers whose struggles paved the way toward the more accepting society they inhabit. And of course the spectre of AIDS hovers.

The Inheritance likewise begins as a gathering of sorts, but more a gathering of an inferred company of young players that might also be a literary society, or in any event, a New York community that has arrived to participate in the hearing and telling of a story about themselves as a community, and how they’ve become this community of the present day. As it is an overwhelming, complex and multi-themed story—it’s told in two parts of three acts each, that take over six hours to perform—its author (Samuel H. Levine) is having trouble beginning it, so virtually out of the mists appears the late British novelist E.M. Forster (Paul Hilton), very much alive out of his time, for the moment, to offer his services as guide and mentor, with permission to use his own epic potboiler novel, Howard’s End as a template. Thus a multi-generational story of straight relationships by a closeted British homosexual, published in 1910, becomes re-envisioned as a multi-generational saga of relationships reaching back from the present day through the height of the AIDS crisis and before, all of whose threads will eventually lead to a large and largely significant house. The two authors also enter the story as other, supporting characters. The lead players are the romantic triangle at the center: social activist Eric Glass (Kyle Soller), rising stage star Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap) and a businessman well into his 50s, Henry Wilcox (originally John Benjamin Hickey, who will return to the role after his stint directing the coming revival of Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite; currently Tony Goldwyn).

As much as possible, the production favors literary image painting of the imagination, in the manner of a staged audio book. The physical set is basically a raised platform, around which the players gather; one will step onto it (or otherwise make contact with it) when entering the main action. As almost always, when an epic story is adapted or created for the stage, less is more; the lack of physical constraint provides fluidity of transition through time and place. Credit director Stephen Daldry for brisk traffic management, clarity, and guiding a bold cast toward peak performances.

But all this goes back to answering the question I asked my colleague: Did I like it and what did I think of it? I enjoyed it while I was there. I was engaged, moved, discomfited, satisfied at the denouement, all as and when I was supposed to be. There’s certainly a lingering after-effect, the play is too strikingly, vehemently written and realized not to leave an imprint. But as I get further from it, I feel cooler toward it, and I can’t tell you why, because I can’t yet tell myself why. There are several reported reactions to The Inheritance, and with the exception of outright dislike, I seem to be experiencing all of them.

Which probably doesn’t matter. Any theatrical event capable of eliciting a response to match its own complexity is almost certainly worth your time.


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