Matthew López’ The Inheritance is an epic adaptation of EM Forster’s Howard’s End.  It’s epic in scale and scope.  It runs for two evenings; each over three hours long and it features a rich, and sometimes bewildering, cast of characters.  I was going to wait until after part 2 before writing about it but I actually think it will work better to review it in two parts.  So here is part 1 as seen on opening night (Wednesday) at the Bluma Appel Theatre.

López has shifted the story to New York late in the Obama administration.  It’s initially largely concerned with a group of gay men young enough not to have been directly impacted by the AIDS epidemic.  This social circle centres around Eric; a professional activist, and Toby; a writer who has finally produced a successful novel and a stage adaptation of it.  They live in a rent controlled apartment on the Upper West Side at a rent that is so far below market that people squeal when they learn about it.

Into their lives comes Walter; an older man.  He is the long time partner of an extremely rich but often absent property developer, Henry Wilcox.  Together they have raised Henry’s sons from his short lived marriage but it’s a fraught relationship.  Walter is/was part of the gay scene.  During the AIDS crisis he took in many dying men and nursed them at a house upstate that Henry had acquired.  Henry is horrified at AIDS being brought into his space.  Henry distances himself physically and emotionally from this project (and Walter) at least partly, because for him, his gayness is quite secondary to his self as a man of wealth and power.

The success of Toby’s play, or rather the success of its lead actor, Adam, and its director, places intolerable strains on his relationship with Eric who grows closer to Walter and, after Walter’s untimely death, Henry.  Walter wills the upstate house to Eric but the young Wilcoxes burn the paperwork.  Nothing must be allowed to escape the commercial clutches of the family.  There are three hours worth of convoluted plot twists which leave us at the final curtain with Eric and Toby estranged and Eric in physical, though not legal, possession of the upstate house (“The Inheritance?”) and its many ghosts.  There are so many loose ends that I’m really looking forward to tonight’s part 2.

It’s complex but it’s also utterly compelling and by turns sad, moving and very, very funny; sometimes all of them at once.  It breaks the fourth wall a lot.  Walter doubles as EM Forster and he and all the characters comment on the action in first person narration.  Often a character will speak and there’s a pause and someone, usually Forster, will interject “but that’s not what he really said” and go on.  It produces tension between what characters do, what they say and what they actually mean.  Forster’s lines are delivered in a measured, civilized, rather British accent by Daniel MacIvor.  I’m not sure that without his sense of calm the piece would work nearly so well.  There’s also a very funny scene at the end of Act 2 where the cast remonstrate with Forster for not telling them how the story finishes.  It’s a clever and effective bit of meta-theatre.

All of this takes place in a large open space that most often represents the UWS apartment with just a few chairs, tables and so on for props and, in his EMF persona, Walter sitting on a chair observing and commenting.  Director Brendan Healey has melded his (large) cast into a really effective team with terrific comic timing.  There are so many places where a pivotal scene containing a vital plot element is simultaneously laugh out loud funny.  To take just one example Eric proposes to Toby in the middle of an enthusiastic and brilliantly, hilariously simulated bout of fucking.  Actually there’s a lot of that.  Intimacy director Siobhan Richardson really earns her corn.  There’s more gay sex here in three hours than you might see in a lifetime of opera going.

MacIvor may be the star of the show but there are very strong performances across the board.  Qasim Khan, as Eric, grows into the piece. He starts out as a (stereotypical?) gay man who can cook and likes ballet and develops a deep psychological complexity as he confronts the differences between his life and those of Walter and Henry, especially when all optimism about the future evaporates in Clinton’s election defeat.  He embodies Forster’s injunction “Only connect”.  In a sense, Antoine Yared as Toby is his antithesis.  It’s a portrayal of a man going to pieces as he realises that his success is illusory and his various sexual escapades meaningless and it’s really disturbing.  There’s a fine performance fromStephen Jackman-Torkoff as the young (very rich) actor who stars in Toby’s play and becomes the object of his infatuation (and doubles up as a male prostitute who Toby makes do with in a Christmas Eve tryst).  Then there’s Jim Mezon as Henry Wilcox.  It’s pretty hard to play a paradox.  Wilcox moves in a world where his gayness is subsumed in wealth and power.  In some ways it’s a very shallow world epitomised by his Donald Trump clone sons.  In other ways he is very drawn to Eric’s world of art and activism.  It’s easy to see why Henry and Walter were attracted but also to see that there must have been a gulf in their relationship all along.  Mezon conveys the same sort of gravitas as MacIvor most effectively.

Where do we go from here?  I guess I’ll find out tonight!

The Inheritance runs until April 14th at the Bluma Appel Theatre. There are a few opportunities to see both parts on one day but mostly it’s a two evening affair.  Check the website for details.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz

Part 2 review is here.