“The Inheritance,” an ambitious two-part play exploring contemporary gay life, will end its Broadway run on March 15 after a twisty journey that saw the show soar in London but sink in New York.
The play, written by Matthew Lopez and directed by Stephen Daldry, was inspired by E.M. Forster’s masterful novel “Howards End,” and similarly explores issues of class and real estate through the intersecting relationships of a small group of people. In “The Inheritance,” which is set in and around New York City, the intergenerational relationships are shadowed by differing experiences of the AIDS epidemic.
The play, which began previews Sept. 27 and opened Nov. 17, is presented in two parts, each running nearly 3 hours and 15 minutes. At the time of its closing, there will have been a total of 46 previews and 138 regular performances (each part is counted as a single performance).
The play, with Tom Kirdahy, Sonia Friedman and Hunter Arnold as lead producers, was capitalized for about $9.1 million, according to a spokesman, and will close at a loss. It opened in New York to mixed reviews, and struggled at the box office; during the week that ended Feb. 16 it grossed $345,984, which is just 33 percent of its potential, and played to houses that were only half full.
The New York failure came as a surprise because the show was hailed as a triumph in London, where it first opened. It won four Olivier Awards — the British equivalent of the Tonys — including one for best new play. And some of the reviews were rapturous; in The Telegraph, the critic Dominic Cavendish described it as “perhaps the most important American play of the century so far” and said, “Star ratings are almost beside the point when confronted by work of this magnitude but hell, yeah, five.”
The reception in New York was polarized but chillier. Ben Brantley, writing in The New York Times, said, “Its breadth doesn’t always translate into depth.” And although many theatergoers found the play profoundly moving, others were quite critical.
Lopez, writing in The New York Times, explained his thinking. “I wanted to write a play that was true to my experience, my philosophy, my heart as a gay man who has enjoyed opportunities that were denied Forster,” he said. “It was my attempt to explain myself to the world as a gay man of my particular generation. I wasn’t attempting to create a generationally defining work of theater that spoke for the entire queer experience.”
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
