The Inheritance (play)
The Inheritance is a play by Matthew Lopez that is inspired by the 1910 novel "Howards End" by E. M. Forster. The play premiered in London at the Young Vic in March 2018, before transferring to Broadway in November 2019. Productions. Original London production. The play was commissioned by Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut. The play was produced in London at the Young Vic Theatre under the direction of Stephen Daldry in March 2018. The play was staged in two parts of over three hours each, intended to be viewed sequentially. It examines love between gay men  in contemporary New York a generation after the AIDS epidemic. It asks what the current generation owes to its forebears. The production transferred to the Noel Coward Theatre in London's West End on 21 September 2018 and was produced by Tom Kirdahy, Sonia Friedman, and Hunter Arnold. "The Inheritance" won Best Play at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards 2018. "The Inheritance" also won Best New Play, Best Director for Stephen Daldry and Best Actor for Kyle Soller at both the 2019 Critics' Circle Awards and the 2019 Laurence Olivier Awards, also winning an Olivier for Best Lighting for  Jon Clark. Original Broadway production. The play premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on 27 September 2019 in previews, with the official opening on 17 November. The production features Lois Smith as Margaret, with Kyle Soller and John Benjamin Hickey, among others, reprising their roles from the London production. In December 2019, it was announced that Tony Goldwyn would replace Hickey for a four-month stint beginning in January 2020, while Hickey was set to direct a revival of "Plaza Suite". However, in February 2020, it was announced that "The Inheritance" would close on March 15, after 46  previews and 138 regular performances. On March 12, the final four performances were cancelled when all Broadway theaters closed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Critical response. The reviewer for "The Telegraph" called the play “perhaps the most important American play of this century.” The "Variety" reviewer wrote the play is a "...vast, imperfect and unwieldy masterpiece that unpicks queer politics and neoliberal economics anew. In addressing the debt gay men owe to their forebears, it dares to ask whether the past hasn’t also sold the present up short." "The Guardian" reviewer wrote: "While Lopez’s play has a literary  framework, it teems with life and incident...Lopez is also unafraid to periodically stop the plot and clear the stage for an impassioned debate: one of the most intense is about the status of gay culture which, having fought so long against oppression, now finds itself in danger of being co-opted." The show received mixed to negative reviews on Broadway. As Ben Brantley wrote in "The New York Times": "Its breadth doesn't always translate into depth." Michael Billington praised Paul Hilton's performance in the Young Vic Theatre production in a list by "The Guardian" writers of the  50 greatest theatre shows since 2000, in which "The Inheritance" placed 15th.