The Inheritance Review: Round House’s Epic Gay Drama Triumphs
Matthew Lopez’s Tony-winning two-part play gets a moving, beautifully acted regional premiere in Bethesda.
Not often (ever) do I weep at the theater, and laugh, reflect, hold my breath in suspense, laugh some more, and weep again all in the same show, with a leisurely lunch sandwiched between emotional catharses.
But Round House’s exquisite production of Matthew Lopez’s sweeping gay opus The Inheritance, directed by Tom Story, elicits such strong emotions. Also, the play, split into two separate parts, each over three hours, has plenty of time to work its magic.
Winner of the Tony, Olivier, Drama Desk, Critics’ Circle, Evening Standard, and Drama League Awards for Best Play, The Inheritance encapsulates a rich, half-century slice of gay American history into its six-hour-plus running time.
And Story’s elegant, sensual, keenly observed production — the play’s premiere run in our region — unpacks that history with profound honesty, courtesy of a brilliant cast. Even a blackout on the theater’s block during the play’s press performance couldn’t dim the power of López’s poetic, romantic, hauntingly elegiac narrative, and of the performers relaying that story.
In fact, not only did the cast resume post-interruption without missing a beat, but lead actor David Gow nimbly spun the delay into a joke, delivered perfectly in character, that brought down the house and further galvanized the audience and actors in the mission of pressing forward.
Regardless, Story has galvanized this ensemble. Starting with Gow, as the story’s hero Eric Glass, each actor inhabits their role convincingly, while also removed from it, portraying the Young Men who, in the play’s post-modern conceit, are performing the winding drama we’re watching as a way of learning these stories of gay adulthood.
Better to remember and record this era’s gay joys and tragedies so they can be passed down to future generations than to risk losing this knowledge to another plague like the AIDS crisis. In its most powerful passage, The Inheritance chillingly evokes the immeasurable loss of that earlier era’s Young Men, an entire generation of talent and knowledge taken from the world.
Eric and his friends and lovers have time to learn, and make mistakes, and leave their marks. His finacé Toby (Adam Poss, heartbreakingly good) aims for greatness as a writer, while their friend Adam (Jordi Bertrán Ramírez) follows his ambitions as an actor. And hopefully they’ll all grow old, partly in remembrance of a generation that didn’t get the chance to become wise senior gays.
For that reason, these Young Men lack mentors, but one older gay gent crosses time to guide them: Morgan (Robert Sella), better known as closeted Edwardian-era English novelist E.M. Forster, whose Howards End inspires the play’s juicily-plotted tale of properties and marriages.
As in Forster’s novel, one particular estate draws the most attention in the story, and onstage. The house in question, realized handsomely at imposing scale by scenic designer Lee Savage, serves in Part 2 as backdrop to much of the action, and principal location for the story’s sweet denouement, a fulfillment worth the wait.
One might also walk away satisfied from The Inheritance and its gifts after just Part 1, if you please. Although to do so would mean missing the brief luminous performance of D.C. theater favorite Nancy Robinette in Part 2, essaying a character essential to the play’s point that we all are important links in the chain of history.
Too many broken links, and stories get lost, history forgets. But maintain those bonds, and the love creates a legacy of pride and progress that might extend unbroken for generations.
The Inheritance (★★★★★) has been extended through Nov. 2 at the Round House Theatre, 4545 East-West Highway, in Bethesda, Md. The Inheritance consists of two separate plays, and tickets to each are sold separately. Tickets for each part are $50 to $124, with various discount options available. Call 240-644-1100, or visit www.roundhousetheatre.org.
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