THEATER
Masterpiece Theater
“The Inheritance” is a profound work of genius
Samuel H. Levine, Kyle Soller, and Andrew Burnap in Matthew Lopez’s “The Inheritance,” directed by Stephen Daldry, at the Broadhurst through March 1.
BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE
There is no other word for
it: “The Inheritance” is
a masterpiece. Matthew
Lopez’s expansive, engrossing
two-play exploration of
contemporary gay life in the postmarriage
equality, effective HIV
treatments world is a brilliant
piece of literature that is surprisingly
potent political theater and a
wildly entertaining — and honest
— tale of a group of men coming
of age and coping with life’s challenges.
Lopez’s earlier plays, notably
“The Legend of Georgia McBride”
and “The Whipping Man” were
excellent, but neither of them
foreshadowed the complexity and
artistry he brings to “The Inheritance.”
As a storyteller, he rivals
Dickens with his ability to create
compelling characters, a pointed
portrait of a specifi c world, and
a monumental, but always controlled,
story. The inheritance
of the title refers to what today’s
young gay men have received from
their elders and those gone.
As dramatic literature, Lopez’s
inheritance is the theater that has
gone before. Terrence McNally put
the fi rst openly, unapologetic gay
character on Broadway in 1965
in “And Things that Go Bump in
the Night,” and at least one critic
called for his death. McNally never
drew back, and he was followed by
Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, William
Hoffman, Martin Sherman,
and others. The urgency and passion
with which these playwrights
refl ected the worlds they inhabited
helped make the culture Lopez
chronicles possible, and, while as
an artist he stands on their shoulders,
he has created a work that is
wholly original and very much of
our time.
Lopez starts with the question:
who are we today as gay men and
as a community? The very structure
of the play illuminates the
enormity of the question. As the
MATTHEW MURPHY
play opens, a group of young men
struggle to begin the narrative.
The ghost of E.M. Forster appears
and “loans” them the structure of
his novel “Howard’s End.” (It’s signifi
cant that Forster was a deeply
closeted gay man who felt he had
to write about love in a strictly heterosexual
way and who, in Lopez’s
telling — and from Forster’s own
journals — regretted he was not
bolder in his expression, leaving
his gay-themed “Maurice” unpublished
until after his death.)
The plot focuses on the intertwined
stories of author Toby Darling,
who having found success
with a young adult novel — which
he believes to be fi ne literature —
pursues a life of pleasure and sex,
and Eric Glass, a staid political
activist. The two young men fi nd
themselves in a tempestuous relationship.
Different as they are,
they are both lost, and the arc of
the plays is their search for identity
and purpose. One story ends
in tragedy and one in redemption,
and while that may border on
melodrama, Lopez handles each
character with honesty and insight
that support the plotting and is
consistent with the often-operatic
scale of the story. In fact, it is the
very scale of all the events in the
play, too numerous to include here,
that gives it its consistent, emotive
power.
Politics, too, bubble always just
under the surface of the plot. Have
acceptance and assimilation in the
mainstream culture undermined
gay identity? With marriage a given
and HIV largely controllable, do
individuals have a responsibility to
the community or is having brunch
and being fabulous enough? Lopez
casts the question in the context
of gay experience, but it’s one that
should resonate through our entire
society today. Lopez argues that
the struggle still continues, largely
in the person of Leo, a young hustler,
who has been tossed out and
marginalized. Eric’s compassion
and care for Leo is an exhortation
that we not close our eyes to what
is going on in the world around us
and that our work is not done —
nor likely will it ever be. We must
pay attention and engage.
Lopez is also unique as a political
playwright in that he sets up
fair fi ghts. Like Shaw, he eschews
the facile and polemical and dives
into the heart of the issue. When
Eric falls for billionaire Henry Wilcox,
the former partner of Walter
Poole whom Eric befriended before
Walter’s death, it’s clear that Henry
is a homocon who justifi es his own
disconnection from the gay community.
If he seems heartless and
arrogant, it is perhaps a defense
against his past suffering. Henry
makes trenchant, well-reasoned
arguments, in particular, about
how HIV meds were developed,
that horrify Eric’s friends but have
a logical grounding. Henry is ultimately
a sympathetic character,
and Lopez’s argument is not about
who is right or wrong on any one
issue, it is about the divisiveness
of intractable ideologies and nar-
➤ THE INHERITANCE, continued on p.25
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