“The Inheritance”

“The Inheritance” by Matthew Lopez

Barrymore Theatre on Broadway

Score: A-

One of the most anticipated plays of the 2019/20 season opened this weekend.  Matthew Lopez’ “The Inheritance” comes to Broadway after rave reviews and multiple awards for its premiere in Britain last year.  Oddly, this very American play, set in New York City, written by an American playwright and cast with predominantly American actors found its first production at London’s Young Vic. The play unfolds in two two-and-half-hour parts and, for me, it was a sort of “Boys in the Band” circa 2019.  At last year’s Tony Awards, Mart Crowley’s controversial (and break-through) portrait of gay men in the late 1960s won the best revival award.  Of course, “The Inheritance” is deeper and more ambitious than Crowley’s depiction of repressed homosexuals on the verge of the gay-liberation movement.  But both plays try to capture the state of young gay men in their time and place. 

Many critiques of “The Inheritance” have compared it to Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” the searing two-part portrait of gay life in the throes of the AIDS crisis.  But Lopez dramatizes what the current generation of gay men have inherited from that period as well as from the generations before that time when being gay evoked in many the image of an incurable disease.

It is difficult for a gay man like myself to separate my identity from my response to “The Inheritance;” after all, my life as a gay man started in the 1960s and continues through the present – I have lived from “Boys in Band” to “The Inheritance.”  I have no idea how a straight man or woman would respond to this play.  It is full of very graphic descriptions of gay sex, one brief nude scene, and lots and lots of pretty boys in speedos.  Of course, the play goes way beyond its salacious attractions, and there are certainly plenty of “straight” plays that have used explicit sex as part of its zeitgeist.

Actually, sitting through almost seven hours of writer Lopez’ and director Stephen Daldry’s creation felt like binging on a complex television series in a single day.  That is not so surprising since “The Inheritance” is loosely based on E. M. Forster’s classic “Howards End” that was adapted into an ever-popular PBS/BBC series. Another E. M. Forster classic, “Maurice” - this one about repressed homosexual love - is also at the core of much of “The Inheritance.” Forster himself appears in the play as a sort of Greek chorus that advises one of the central characters, Toby Darling, who is writing a play titled “Love Boy” that becomes a Broadway hit just as Toby falls victim to his own failed sense of self-worth. Forster lived a closeted life that was the only option in a country, Britain, that jailed gay people until 1967.  He wrote “Maurice” in 1913/14, but it was not published until 1971, a few years after the author’s death.  So, while Forster’s creation was repressed, Toby’s fallacious portrait of himself becomes a Broadway hit.

The charm of “The Inheritance” is the way Lopez and Daldry have interwoven the stories of half a dozen central characters with the support of a lively cast of friends, lovers, and fuckbuddies.  While the play is full of stereotypical events in the lives of contemporary young gay men, at least gay young men who are free to express their sexual identity, it is really about more profound issues.  What is true love?  What is the relation of “need” to love?  What is the difference between the self you project and the self you actual really are? What is the role of compassion in a truthful life?  And what has the current generation of gay men inherited from their predecessors and how does that inheritance impact their lives?

These are complex issues and they are also issues that a straight audience member might find compelling in this lengthily drama. Director Daldry has chosen a minimalist style that is perhaps the best use of this stark technique I have ever experienced.  A flat white platform that rises and falls slightly is the site of all of the action.  There are occasional miniature pieces of scenery at the rear of the stage to represent a house where a compassionate gay man cared for dying victims of the AIDS epidemic.  But there is no need for scenery as the lives of this group of contemporary queers unfold.  The acting is near perfect; each actor brings life and believability to his part, large or small.  These characters are a specific subgroup. While they come from different backgrounds, all have accepted their sexual identity and live as free as gay people can live at the start of the 21^st Century.  Several of the supporting characters are people of color but the play has little to say about that aspect of gay identity.  And it is only in the second half of the play that we encounter a contemporary lost young man who can only survive through prostitution and eventually inherits the deadly, but now controllable, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. 

The compassionate epidemic care giver named Walter and his arrogant and self-centered multi-billionaire real estate developer partner, Henry, are the only “over 40s” in this gay world. Walter dies in the first half, presumably of natural causes, and Henry becomes a central figure in the exploration of love versus need in the second half.  The only female in the play is played by the always wonderful Lois Smith as the mother of a boy she rejected when he came out but suffered with him at his death in Walter’s retreat.  She is the only connection with the “straight world” and her appearance at the end of the play reminds us that these men, now and in the past, are not the only recipients of this inheritance.

The first half ends with a powerful portrayal of the AIDS epidemic with a compassion that evokes pure emotion from the audience.  Some viewers suggest that the play might have ended there – that there was no need for the additional 3.5 hours.  But this is not a play about that terrible period in our shared history.  That tragedy is only one part of our inheritance.  There are certainly times when the second half feels unnecessarily drawn out and, occasionally, repetitive.  But think about those series you have binged.  Any episode seen in isolation might have seemed unnecessary, but the sum of the series’ parts was compelling. That is the effect that “The Inheritance” has if you stick with it.  This play may not be an absolute masterpiece, but it asks questions and portrays characters struggling with issues that we all have inherited, gay and straight.