Tony-winning WSU alum produces Broadway’s epic ‘Inheritance’
Following its critically acclaimed, Olivier Awardwinning premiere in London’s West End in 2018, Matthew Lopez’s two-part, sixand-a-half-hour gay-themed epic drama “The Inheritance” stands as one of the best new plays of Broadway’s 2019-2020 season.
Insightful and contemporary, the play is inspired by E.M. Forster’s “Howard’s End,” directed by Tony winner and Academy Award nominee Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliot”) and seen Feb. 12 at New York’s Barrymore Theatre, “The Inheritance” addresses the desires, pitfalls, complications, and tragedies within New York City’s gay community circa 2015 to 2018.
A close circle of friends is put to the test when budding playwright Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap) and his activist-boyfriend Eric Glass (Kyle Soller) break up and enter new relationships. In fact, Eric’s romance with wealthy gay Republican Henry Wilcox (Tony Goldwyn of “Scandal”) truly irritates his buddies.
As matters of love challenge and evolve, the characters question the responsibility of gay men to gay culture, especially for a generation without significant knowledge of gay icons or the AIDS epidemic.
For example, over brunch with his friends leading to flavorful discussion about the kitschy nature of camp and Sean Penn winning an Academy Award for portraying Harvey Milk, Eric ponders the future of the gay community and gay identity:
“American students are taught nothing about the famous queers throughout history. All my life I was taught the Shoah but it wasn’t until I was in college and saw a student production of ‘Bent’ that I learned they threw queers in the gas chambers, too. Kids aren’t taught about Harvey Milk, Bayard Rustin, Stonewall, the Plague Years. And yet Tristan’s 14-year-old niece knows ‘Yas Queen’ because of ‘Broad City.’ It feels like we’re getting stripped for parts and the inside is hollowing out. It honestly feels like the community that I came up in is slowly fading away.”
“The Inheritance” also serves as a stinging response to the 2016 presidential election considering Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump loom large as subtext. It’s produced by Wright State University alum Joey Monda of Sing Out, Louise! Productions, which creates and distributes cinemaquality stage-to-screen films in an attempt to expand Broadway’s brand, reach and impact.
Monda won the Tony last season for producing Anais Mitchell’s musical “Hadestown” and was also represented on Broadway this season by producing Jeremy O. Harris’ controversial, thought-provoking racial drama “Slave Play.”
“After seeing the show in London, there was no question between my colleagues at Sing Out, Louise! Productions
and I that we had to be a part of bringing ‘The Inheritance’ to Broadway,” Monda said. “We are passionate about giving voice to new and underrepresented stories and artists and ‘The Inheritance’ does just that. In his Broadway debut, Matthew Lopez achieves a theatrical milestone. The play examines a generation’s humanity and need to love and be loved all while asking from where we each gain our sense of self. It is art in its highest form because it reaches beyond politics, gender and sexuality and asks what unites us rather than what divides us.”
In a strikingly imaginative moment, Forster, interweaving among the characters throughout, apologizes for not releasing his risqué novel “Maurice” during the course of his life, denying the gay community an empowering story for decades. Recalling the political fury and scope of “Angels in America” with shades of classic gay-themed plays “The Boys in the Band” and “The Normal Heart” as well as Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” and HBO’s contemporary dramedy “Looking,” “The Inheritance” powerfully resonates as an unflinching, chilling and ultimately hopeful reflection of our times. For tickets, visit telecharge.com.
West Side Story
Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins’ glorious “West Side Story” premiered in 1957, but its radically transformative Broadway revival is all about 2020.
Boldly staged with multimedia finesse by visionary Belgian
director Ivo van Hove (“A View From the Bridge,” “Network”) and seen Feb. 14 at New York’s Broadway Theatre, this refreshingly reconceived, nointermission “West Side Story” provides a blunt, provocative examination of America today simmering with racial turmoil and attack of The Other.
By replacing Robbins’ graceful ballet blueprint with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s sharply visceral routines and cutting the bubbly, optimistic “I Feel Pretty,” van Hove has a field day creating a raw, in-your-face, street-savvy, gender-fluid landscape bolstered by riveting elements of danger, division, sexuality, hopelessness, tension, and fear — giving Tony and Maria’s star-crossed journey a darkly dramatic and unprecedented edginess.
In addition to raising the tribalism between the Jets and Sharks, intimidating to the hilt with fierce tattoos and fiercer attitudes even while displaying their cell phones when approached by the police, van Hove turns “Gee, Officer Krupke” into a knockout cautionary tale about social justice and black male incarceration. He also gives the border wall a cameo in the most rousing yet relevantly unsettling renditions of “America” Broadway has ever seen.
Purists may scoff at van Hove’s gutsy, “I Feel Gritty” approach, but his cast is outstanding (Isaac Powell’s beautiful rendition of “Maria” is a gem) and his unique blending of theater and film takes this classic musical to new storytelling heights. For tickets, visit telecharge.com.