Matthew López felt detached. While reading E. M. Forster’s classic novel, Howard’s End, in New York’s Central Park several years ago, the Tony award-winning playwright was inspired to write his own version of the twentieth-century tale of three British social classes intertwining during Europe’s Edwardian era.

Using the essence of Forster’s famous mandate from the novel, “Only connect!” López would set his version, The Inheritance in contemporary metropolitan life, replete with themes of young love, politics, sexual escapades, friendship, substance abuse, redemption, and haunting memories of the AIDS epidemic, all of which would be discussed between various generations of gay men.

The Inheritance premiered in 2018, in London. It transferred to Broadway a year later and has since been translated and staged in multiple countries around the world, picking up numerous and prestigious awards and nominations along the way. Currently, Washington, D.C.-area residents can connect to the work at Round House Theatre, where it is receiving a regional premiere under the direction of Tom Story.

López, who is of Puerto Rican descent, shares his reasoning for creating it.

“I think I had to teach myself as a younger gay man of color how to have compassion for older white gay men,” he says. “It wasn’t necessarily ingrained in me. It wasn’t something that I was willing to do. One of the reasons I wrote the play is that I just felt tired of feeling disconnected from other people. I felt tired of mistrusting other people. The play itself and the writing of the play is an act of radical compassion. I forced myself into some acts of radical compassion and personally, I am the better for having gone through that.”

Although López doesn’t reveal what parts of the play are autobiographical, he does confess that the stamp of his personal life is reflected in the work.

“It is very accurate to say that I poured myself into the play — it is very much a reflection of myself,” says the 48-year-old playwright. “My life is sprinkled in and around all the characters in some way or another, sometimes specifically, and then other times, just my feelings and emotions or the inner life of me.”

Cast members of the Round House production, who had access to López throughout the rehearsal process, suggest that one of the strongest reflections of the playwright is found in the leading character of Toby Darling, a young, handsome, hotshot writer whose memoir is adapted into a Broadway play. Toby, portrayed by Adam Poss, is a well-intended but reckless soul with an unquenchable thirst for vice and personal drama. “Toby’s journey was kind of Matthew López’s way to play out what would have happened had he not made the choice that he made at a certain crossroad,” Poss says.

Poss also relates to the story. “I know that in my past, I’ve been the Toby character in a relationship. Because of trauma there exists the ‘hurt people, hurt people’ idea, but you truly have to make a choice at some point. Do you carry your trauma with you, and let that be your excuse for everything bad that you do in the world? Or do you acknowledge that it happened to you, move on, and be a different, better person because of it? I think I was able to move past it and to heal. So it was interesting to play a character that doesn’t.”

With the exception of DMV favorite, Nancy Robinette, the entire cast is composed of queer men. Poss describes the early days of working with colleagues who share the commonality. “We all cried in front of each other, probably before we had left the rehearsal table,” he says. “To have a table full of queer men sharing their own stories deeply and personally about how we all got to where we are today was extraordinary. The vulnerability that came from it opened the door for us all to just be full, open, beating hearts to each other.”

Robert Sella takes on the dual roles of E. M. Forster, who serves as the show’s narrator, and Walter Poole, a refined, seasoned gentleman who has been in a long term relationship with Henry Wilcox, a politically conservative real estate developer. Sella relays his own experience with the early process of putting the show together and how Story encouraged his cast to share as much about themselves as they wanted.

“It was not just surface material that we shared,” he says. “It was much more. We talked about our families, how we grew up, how we came into a world of the arts, and what we’re struggling with and living with now. It felt very safe and it felt very important for all of us to connect on that level, because we were gonna go on this road together to do this play.”

Director Story describes the importance of having that type of icebreaker while lavishing praise on his cast.

“There were a lot of strangers in the room, and I think it’s really hard to create when you don’t know anything about the other person,” says Story, who portrayed Prior Walter in Round House’s epic 2016 production of Angels in America. “One of the most wonderful parts of the beginning was having people talk about what it was like to be a queer person. Someone in the cast graduated from college the week before we started. Another person in the cast is a TV star. And another person in the cast has done about ten Broadway shows. So that range of life experience is huge. We all want the play to succeed. This cast is so talented, but they’re also all hard workers. When work ethic meets talent, that’s kind of the ideal. It’s how I’ve tried to live my life, too, and I found a group of people who also were interested in that.”

Most of the cast had not seen The Inheritance staged before joining the Round House production, but they all had visceral reactions after reading the script. Robert Gant, celebrated for his role as Professor Ben Bruckner on Showtime’s Queer As Folk plays the affluent Henry Wilcox. In the play, friends gather at Henry’s West Village apartment when, in the midst of a political conversation, he proclaims, “I am a good Republican. I gave money to the nominee as I do every four years…. I believe in low taxes and free markets.”

The 57-year-old, strikingly handsome Gant wrestled with his character’s ideology. “This very conservative billionaire is certainly a different take on this whole sphere, which was its own thing to walk through. I mean, as a very liberal guy who definitely voted differently, I really had to work on getting to Henry’s justification for how he lives his life today in terms of that.”

Still, he was impressed by López’s magnum opus. “I was blown away by it,” he says. “The scope of what it considers within the world of the gay experience and journey and also universally — like Queer as Folk — is in a lot of ways immense and vital. In terms of stage work this is by far the most expansive consideration of the queer journey and of its history, and its culture. The cross-generational dynamics are so beautifully considered along with the legacy of AIDS.”

Jordi Bertrán Ramírez, a recent Yale Graduate, embodies the dual roles of Adam, an aspiring actor who stars in Toby’s play, and Leo, a sweet, unhoused HIV-positive sex worker. Bertrán Ramírez read the play during the pandemic for his own enjoyment and recalls texting friends to express how much he saw himself in the play as an actor.

“It’s funny how life works sometimes,” he says. “To be able to be a part of this play that I read years ago is a gift…. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for theater that feels like an event. It seems that we’re more interested in shorter and shorter play with 80-minute runtimes and no intermission — which is a kind of play that I love, but there is something so ambitious about The Inheritance in this modern era of reduced interest in long-form content.”

The Inheritance is performed in two different parts, each one running approximately three and a half hours. Patrons can choose to see it at two different times or, at certain performances, can see both parts in a single day. In the age of TikTok attention spans and demand for instant gratification, it’s a lot to ask from both the audience and the actors, but theatergoers — and critics — are praising the audacious production.

“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,” wrote this publication’s theater critic André Hereford in his five-star review.

“What is special about this play is that people of various ages are responding to different things emotionally,” says Bertrán Ramírez. “I had a wonderful, older gentleman tell me that he was a doctor at Georgetown when they had their first AIDS case, which was so moving to hear. And then I’ve had teenagers come up to me after the show and resonate with the feelings of anxiety in young love and the desire to just be seen and cared for. I’ve had folks in their thirties tell me about friends that they’ve lost to drug abuse. So, there’s a beautiful intergenerationality that this play brings that allows people to connect with it in their own individual ways.”

Sella agrees. “The audiences have been great. Some are stopping me on the street or waiting after the show to talk, some are leaving notes and sending emails to the theater. I’ve just been so grateful that Round House has been rewarded for that brave idea to take on a show like this, which is so big and so expensive. It’s really a challenge for people to come back to two big plays — but then to have it be received so well, at least from my point of view, I feel like that’s delightful.

“Perceptibly straight folks might wonder if the show has anything to do with them,” he continues. “But because López has written such a specific world, it becomes more universal. Slowly but surely, instead of blocking out the idea of gay or queer men and their particular stories, they start to care about these characters and their humanity. It touches them because they know exactly what those feelings are. They’ve had the same ones, only in a slightly different format. And that’s thrilling — that’s what the theater should do and that’s what we love about it. So, I feel proud to be some small part of that continuance, and to pass along a story that will speak to everyone, even though they seem like people you might never know, or that aren’t you.”

“Universally, the response is that folks are blown away,” adds Gant. “There’s been a lot of gratitude I think for those who relate to the journey.”

Producing the show was a huge lift. Story saw the Broadway production and believed that it would be part of his life at some point, but after the pandemic hit and the economics of theater changed, he shelved the idea. Still, Round House Theater’s artistic director Ryan Rilette didn’t give up on bringing it to life. He told Story that they just needed extra funding. Story reached out to the Roy Cockrum Foundation, a philanthropic organization whose mission is to provide grants to theaters for productions larger than their budget allows. They graciously obliged.

“Watching this come alive has been a real reward,” beams Story. “Watching the movement sequences, design elements, the simplicity of the costumes and projections all took a lot of crafting and collaboration. I feel very proud to be a part of it.”

He has infused that pride into his cast. “I’ve encouraged them to live in the moment, and to realize that this is not common. It’s rare that we get to do something that means so much, and that everyone gets along so well and that the writing is so good. It just feels like a very special lucky time for my life, and for all of us.”

For Sella, the timing of the show couldn’t be more ideal.

“Especially in the world that we live in now, it’s very easy to be on one side or the other, and it’s hard to find a way to bridge a gap where we can all find our relative similarities and our humanity,” he says. “At the end of the day, we are all just human beings who, I suspect, all want pretty much the same things — even though it may spin off into a different religion or a different political point of view.

“I think if you strip all of that away and if we were really simply in a place with each other where the noise was quieted down, we would find that we just want someone to love us. We want to be safe, we want to have good food, we want to have work for our hands and minds that is meaningful to us, and have a laugh. That is important to me. So, I’m trying to find a balance between my very passionate ideas about what I think the world should be, and the opinions I have about people who don’t agree with me, and find a way to have peace in it.”

Perhaps Sella is correct. Nearly one hundred years after it was published, López drew inspiration from Howard’s End. Years from now, The Inheritance might galvanize a new generation to learn from those who came before and encourage them to live and write their own brave new stories.

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.

Keep scrolling to see Todd Franson’s exclusive photos of the cast, photographed on September 25, 2025 at Round House Theatre. Scenic Designer: Lee Savage. Lighting Designer: Colin K. Bills. Costume Designer: Frank Labovitz.