The Inheritance at the Noel Coward Theatre: A virtuoso piece of theatre that ranks among the modern greats
Until 19 Jan
The Inheritance, set in New York’s gay community a generation on from the Aids epidemic, draws natural, inevitable comparisons to Angels in America. And while Matthew Lopez’s two-part, seven-hour epic is certainly worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as that superlative play, to think of it as merely a kind-of sequel would be to downplay how brilliant it is in its own right.
Ostensibly a modern reworking of EM Forster’s Howards End, it begins with a group of young, gay men sitting in a creative writing class. Their older teacher, himself modelled on Forster, tasks them with collectively writing a story that draws on their experiences. “It will begin with Toby’s answering machine messages,” one suggests, kickstarting a wonderfully fluid format in which ideas and scenes segue into one another, with quickfire revisions made to the hilarious, tragic story as it develops.
For a story that takes an entire day to tell, it unrolls at a blistering pace. With no sets to change – the only embellishment for most of the play is a central plinth that raises and lowers – there are no breaks in the action, just a constant, overlapping flow of dialogue.
Given the tangle of plots and sub plots, coming up with a pithy synopsis is like reducing a season of The Wire or The Sopranos into a couple of sentences. But here goes… Toby – he of the answering machine messages – is a smalltime author and wannabe playwright who’s dating the kind, generous and rather lost Eric. When Toby’s play is picked up, he falls for its beautiful young star, Adam, pushing Eric into the company of his neighbour Walter, a frail older man who once offered palliative care to those dying from Aids in the 1980s.
Walter’s house in upstate New York, which he bequeaths to Eric, becomes a metaphor for the way we try to hide the painful lessons from the past; a scene in which Eric reconnects with that past is as transcendental a moment of theatre as I’ve experienced, leaving half the audience gasping through floods of tears.
Lopez also effortlessly tackles the here-and-now – he perfectly distils the emotions experienced by many of us on 8 November 2016, for instance – that transition from premature triumphalism, to confusion, disbelief, denial, anger and, eventually, an impotent desire to “fix” things.
There are no weak links in the cast – Kyle Soller’s Eric is hugely likeable, making you feel every cruel blow dealt by his self-absorbed partner. Andrew Burnap, however, prevents Toby from becoming a villain. Instead he’s a lost boy, trapped in time by his fear of who he really is. A scene in which Toby literally dances himself into oblivion is a particularly outstanding piece of physical acting.
But the stand-out performance is by Samuel H Levine as both the young actor Adam and his homeless doppelganger Leo, with the actor shifting seamlessly from one to the other, one moment full of hope and promise, the next weighed down by despair and resignation.
The Inheritance has everything, tearing through the full spectrum of human emotions. It will leave you at once drained and hungry for more; when the seventh hour was almost over, I began to feel a sense of impending loss. Lopez’s play will make you laugh, then cry, then shake your head at his sheer, brilliant audacity. Rarely does a playwright demonstrate such a bravura grasp of the medium.
If you missed this play during its first run at the Young Vic, you have been given a reprieve. Don’t miss it a second time – this is one of the most incredible, important plays of the century so far, and with a running time this long, who knows when it will next be staged.