The Inheritance - YV

My issue is that it wasn't - in the novel, the Wilcoxes have three adult children, two sons and a daughter. The play includes Henry Wilcox's two (apparently) heterosexual sons but erases the daughter. That felt misogynistic / Saudi Arabian Ikea Catalogue to me. I thought maybe Lopez was going to use one of the sons, as in the novel, to kill Leo, and be in there as a heterosexual male figure of violence, but that didn't happen.

I reread the book before I saw the play, and I was glad I did. There are certainly things that will resonate differently if you're familiar with the novel - but it isn't precisely a straightforward adaptation, there are places where Lopez diverges quite significantly from his source material, and it will work if you don't read the book first.

The Merchant Ivory film is on Netflix, if you want a quicker "study guide".

I interviewed two of the actors in this in the last few days for a website I write for, one is gay and one is straight. As a woman I can appreciate the fact there are no women in it because they aren't really needed for the story. The gay men in this story represent something on a much much larger, global scale than just their own characters or "Forster's pupils". I can also understand the decision to not include the daughter because Henry's heterosexual sons weren't "very nice" to say the least and if he put in one woman and makes her like that ...... Well, I can imagine that would make things worse wouldn't it?
I do like that Redgrave sort of embodies the character of a mother of all of them really. But at the end of the day, this is a story about the gay community. Both actors, both different ages and sexuality have noted how much it's changed them too. I think it's a truly prominent, excellent piece of work.

I thought Lopez's Henry was a rather more rounded character than Forster's, actually. We are shown - or rather told, because this play tells far more than it shows (and whether that is a problem is another discussion) - a very convincing reason why Lopez's Henry is so emotionally guarded, and Lopez's Henry makes more of an effort to meet Eric halfway, in terms of things like cultural activities, than Forster's Henry does with Margaret. Lopez's Henry does a couple of awful things, but I wouldn't characterise him as 'vile', and I appreciated that Lopez put a Republican billionaire at the centre of his (very, very, very long) play and didn't make him into either a stereotypical Log Cabin Republican or a gay Mitt Romney clone.

In the big political blow-up with Eric's friends when it's revealed that Henry is a Republican, I found it a fascinating - and actually laudable - choice that Lopez makes the most ardent, committed Clinton supporter in the room the rudest, most boorish, most dismissive participant in the debate. When Henry talks about AIDS funding and research advancing further under individual enterprise than they would under direct government funding, he builds a convincing case. I don't agree with it, but Lopez allows him to make his argument, and make it well. Opposite him, Justin #1 dismisses Henry's argument rather than attempting to rebut it, and doesn't do so politely even though he's a guest in Henry's house. The play's overall political point of view is certainly liberal-progressive, but there's more nuance there than there could have been.

(I enjoyed the production btw, and would happily see it again if I lived in London!)

I know you were! The point I was trying to make, obviously not very well, is that I think in this particular case Lopez's version of the character is far less one-dimensionally 'bad'.



One of the things I find interesting is that Lopez
That's a definite choice, as is the fact that Toby, overall, is a far less sympathetic character than Helen. I do think the play as a whole works better when Lopez plays around with the source material than in the (few) scenes where he sticks to it rigidly.

Like you, as I think I said somewhere else here, I liked it, overall, very much indeed - I thought it was a genuinely magnificent piece of writing, albeit one where there are some legitimate holes to pick, elevated by an absolutely flawless production and superb performances. But, as I said, there are a few holes to pick, and a few places where it's worth looking at how he's chosen to diverge from his source material.

Thanks SF. I am guessing that I didn’t really pay enough attention to Howard’s End to link Helen with Toby, and the fact they were in a relationship rather than siblings put me off the trail! Of course, you are a genius! Tibby was the best thing about the recent BBC series. I wouldn’t have spotted anyone as Jacky Bast, but of course, you have now reminded me of her connection with Henry, which I completely forgot about! 

Oh, and who is Aunt Juley? Is that an amalgam of EM Forster and Vanessa Redgrave’s character? 

Thanks SF. Again, not quite familiar enough with the novel, but the Miss Avery character and certain scenes (without giving anything away so I don't think it needs to be spoilered) were similar to those which you have reminded me of.

The Angels influences are arguably the ones that help the play the most, because everyone wants to see something like Angels, but also hurt the play the most, because nothing can match up to Angels.

Angels is far more emotional and memorable, because it's the perfectly structured life-adventure of four beautiful characters. By contrast, this show alienates us immediately from the life-adventure of the characters, by presenting us with a reality at the beginning that removes us from the immediacy of the story they will be telling, and forcing us to be cerebral rather than emotional about the whole thing.

I think it succeeds immensely in getting us to talk about it, I think it reaches emotional heights despite it's format rather than because of them, I think that while the performances are astonishingly memorable, nothing can compare to Angels in terms of emotions. A play, where likeable people are actually dying, is always going to emotionally trump a play where unlikeable people talk about dying.

And that's why the relation of the play to Angels is always going to initially help, then severely hurt, this play. Because there are almost no plays as insightful and as moving as Angels.

This play is better than most plays, but it's no Angels.

The text is available at the Young Vic now, if you're near enough to swing by (or if anyone wants to know if they should take cash along to future trips in which case you'll need £8). I wouldn't hold out for author's notes though; I've only flicked through it so far, but it appears to plunge straight in and I don't think there's anything at the end either.

(I believe the printed cast list in the book has confused Michaels Marcus and Walters, by the way, as there's a bit of paper in the front of mine with a corrected cast list. Anyone who buys the book from another source and cares about cast lists might want to be aware of that.)

Kathryn - indeed, the verbal sex scene from Bent was perhaps an inspiration for a scene in Part One. That was more moving and poignant, whereas here, it was more comic. 

Steve - I have to say I am mostly with you on this. I preferred Angels (Part One, as Part Two was too fantastical for my personal liking) to the Inheritance as it showed much more emotion, and the effects on other characters (and strong women) - such as Joe's wife Harper and his mother. As noted in my original email, the context of families was much more pronounced there and missing here. And, I agree, a play about dying rather than talking about dying (even though it was the past generation) was more moving for me.

The world which the Inheritance inhabits seems an entirely gay world (hence hardly anyone outside their own gay sphere of friends and relationships), where the coming out and acceptance issues in other works have moved on to the issues of today (as illustrated by the debate in the play). I am sure this was the writer's intention, but it made it less easy to relate for me. I also think this will make it a harder sale to the mainstream audiences on any possible transfer, and the advertising may well try to make it more universal in its themes?

The positive effect of Angels is that last year's huge success at the National must have helped pave the way for the Inheritance. When I first booked the Inheritance last year, it was on the basis I had seen Angels, and I would not have been so eager to book a new two part play by (for me) an unknown playwright without the "inheritance"  of Angels.