Review by Susanne Dahn
Each and every one of us are heirs. Some of us are heirs to assets, others to liabilities. But all of us inherit DNA, vulnerabilities, history, talents, and perhaps above all, potential.
The epic 7 hour, 2 part, Matthew Lopez play The Inheritance, inspired by EM Forster’s 1910 novel Howard’s End but set in 2016/2017 queer Manhattan, delivered on its potential when it premiered in London at the Young Vic in March 2018. It sold every single seat during that season as well as winning a slew of Critics Circle and Laurence Olivier awards including Best New Play.
Oddly though, when the production transferred to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway in November 2019, it failed to fill up more than two-thirds of the seats during most weeks and closed after only 138 performances. By my reckoning that means it ended on the eve of the lockdowns triggered by our most recent global plague.
And plague is very relevant as the play’s central drama revolves around three generations of gay men living in Manhattan three decades after the AIDS crisis of 1980s with the oldest of those generations - couple Henry and Walter - having lived through and survived the AIDS crisis.
Inevitable comparisons have been drawn to Angels in America, the other two-part epic play by Tony Kushner that explores the AIDS crisis in New York as well as with Hanya Yanagihara’s gay-trauma novel, and now play, A Little Life.
Other than that both venue Fortyfive Downstairs and The Inheritance producer Cameron Luke also staged Angels in America in 2017, the comparisons don’t hold too long however as The Inheritance is not nearly as complex or demanding as those comparators (except perhaps in terms of physical endurance).
Unlike those other works of intricate and meaningful layers, The Inheritance is in many ways not a great deal more than a staged reality show or soap opera.
Though it is a dazzling production, which the enthusiastic and talented cast and crew of creatives draw more energy from than one might expect which is to the the great credit of the deft direction of Kitan Petkovski and his overall
collaborative approach with the cast and crew.
The dialogue and narration is fast, powerfully delivered and funny, the movement and dance is vibrant and fun and the stagecraft is accomplished. The impressive score is also especially noteworthy.
It’s just that on close examination the dazzle is just the shimmer of the sheer in front of the window. It‘s shiny and alluring and queer as all get out, but there’s not much substance. Close up it might just be the old umbrella.
The beautiful barefoot boys of the young man’s chorus spend a great deal of time looking at themselves and each other and talking about themselves and each other. Yaaaassss Kweeeeen !!! They shop, they party, they fuck, they vomit and then tell stories about it all. Most of them have little sense of history and are unable to distinguish between the old of the Clintons and the old of Versailles.
All thirteens actors hold a lovely rhythm and weave between them which celebrates the collaborative style of the production and they all have some knock out moments, but the production is carried by the four leads plus two.
The principal young couple comprise the indulgent, narcissistic and destructive aspiring writer Toby (aptly surnamed) Darling played with a leave-nothing-behind annoying brilliance by Tomáš Kantor who appropriates the opening line of the novel of a man he loathes believing this qualifies him to be the Holden Caulfield of his generation. Toby knows nothing of his own history and moreover doesn’t want to know. My heart is pure says Toby but unfortunately it’s surrounded by the rest of me.
Eric (aptly surnamed) Glass is by contrast sensible and clear sighted. He deeply knows his history because he lives in it - in the same intergenerational pre-war rent-controlled apartment that his shoah surviving grandmother became an American in and where both he and one of his parents were born. Eric is flawlessly played by Charles Purcell with strength and depth and composure. Purcell’s performance is mercifully melodrama free and as solid as the Waterford Crystal decanter.
The older couple, Henry and Walter, are as poorly matched as the younger one. Henry Willcox (exactly as in Howard’s End) has little use for sentimentality and sees their 36 year partnership as merely a succession of dinners while compassionate and caring Walter Poole, after 36 years with the only man he ever needed to be loved by, whose two sons he raises, confesses they are still trying to sort things out.
Henry is played perfectly by Hunter Perske who occupies every steak, potatoes and cheese cake corner of this red-state character. His disregard for history is up in lights when, at least initially, he fails to honour Walter’s gift of the 1790 upstate house to Eric and he keeps nothing that might remind him of Walter.
Walter is played warmly and wisely by Dion Mills who embodies Walter’s grace and generosity and courage in the way he lives his life, is loyal to Henry, cares for community during the AIDS crisis and faces his own death. In a show whose characters are divided into the selfish and those who serve, Walter is an exemplar.
Dion Mills very skilfully also plays Morgan or EM Forster with both wisdom and wit. Forster was an English writer living back when homosexuality was a crime and so was closeted most of his life despite having a forty year relationship and writing a novel of homosexual love that would be published after his death. He acts as a kind of narrator from the past encouraging the young men, but also clearly envying them their modern freedoms.
The other important performances at both ends of the age spectrum are from Jillian Murray as Margaret who exudes all the warmth, healing and regret of her text and Karl Richmond as both Adam and Leo who delivers the fear and vulnerability and cockiness of his characters with a sureness that beckons a great acting future.
In a crucial scene in the first half of this play, one character asks EM Forster what he has done in his lifetime to impact future generations of gay men. The question is left hanging for the audience to answer - maybe that he kept going ? that he encouraged others ? that he left us Maurice ?
Gay history of course didn’t start with Truvada or directions to the Stonewall Inn and we know how important history and community are to any marginalised group.
The modern stripping away of queer cultural markers and spaces is such an important issue and it’s disappointing that the Lopez work did not explore this more deeply. Unless maybe it did.
Perhaps the Forster question could equally be directed at The Inheritance - how will this work impact future generations ? Maybe immersion in a multi-generational story full of cultural markers in a supportive queer space is impact enough.
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