The Inheritance, Parts 1 & 2 (Forty Five Downstairs) ★★★★

Written by Matthew López. Australian Premiere. Forty Five Downstairs. 17 Jan – 11 Feb, 2024

Matthew López’s Tony and Olivier Award winning two-part play, The Inheritance, is a sprawling epic, very loosely based on EM Forster’s Howards End. It was lauded in London, but dismissed on Broadway, in Melbourne it’s back to being adored once more.

Set in 2015/16, it is the story of… well to say whose story it is would be a bit of a spoiler, but let’s just say it is the story of a youngish gay couple Eric Glass (Charles Purcell) and Toby Darling (Tomáš Kantor), living in Manhattan. Eric is the calm centre to Toby’s creative storm. They receive two pieces of news that will change their lives. Firstly, Toby’s semi-autobiographical YA novel is to be adapted for Broadway, and Eric learns that they will soon be forced to leave the rent-controlled apartment that generations of his family have grown up in. For the next six and a bit hours we follow the lives of Eric and Toby, as well as their circle of friends, as seismic shifts happen around them, but mainly, inside them both… oh and EM Forster himself is a character.

As anyone who’s spoken to me for more than five minutes knows, I love this play and managed to see the original production a number of times with a number of different casts. But this Australian premiere at Forty Five Downstairs, is the first time I’ve experienced a totally new interpretation of the text, unconnected to the original. In a way, it’s like watching your favourite film being remade. It’s hard to judge the work on its own without unfairly comparing it to the big-budget original but I’m going to try. Maybe I’ll write a big comparison piece once the (totally unrelated) Sydney production has happened…

Yes, the length is daunting. Watching it on stage (especially if you watch both parts in one day – the best way to watch it IMO) is like reading a novel or bingeing a whole TV series. Comparisons to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America are obvious but unwarranted. While on the surface they are both stories of gay men in New York and both deal with the impact of the AIDS crisis, the similarities stop there. Angels in America is two separate plays, written years apart, both with very different tones. The Inheritance is one story. You absorb The Inheritance in a different way. As a durational work you settle into the play’s own rhythms of micro-moments and overlapping character arcs. The thought of sitting down in a fringe theatre (that I’d never been to before) was frightening, but thankfully, Forty Five Downstairs is a really beautiful space!

This cast are terrific in roles that are constantly shifting (acting as greek chorus, minor characters and narrators at various points). Karl Richmond has the biggest hurdle to jump playing two major characters, Adam and Leo, and succeeds in being the emotional core that holds the story together. Tomáš Kantor is magnetic as Toby, even as he pushes the character to his most unlikable edge.

For the lead actors the play is like climbing Everest (that’s a joke for those who’ve seen the play). There are sizable monologues that are mini plays unto themselves. At its worst, The Inheritance gets awfully didactic (Part One, Act Two gets particularly preachy, it’s basically a TED Talk) but at its best these speeches are poetry. I can’t sing the praises of both Dion Mills (as Morgan/Walter) and Jillian Murray (Margaret) enough – both impeccable storytellers who can hold an audience all on their own.

There is a sort of accepted wisdom that Part One is better than Part Two. It certainly holds the bigger emotional gut punches of the two, but I found Part Two to be more effective here. It gives the supporting players more to do and really highlights the great work of the ensemble. Joss McClelland gets to shine as Jasper, Eric’s politically active best friend, and Javon King’s Tristan is an appealing blend of intelligence, empathy and sass. Rupert Bevan and Alex Thew also come to the fore, playing younger versions of Walter and Henry.

The play’s length brings its own challenges for the performances. It’s hard to keep things consistent but also fresh across the running time. Kantor’s energy gives Toby life, but the chaos-twink vibes threaten to grate as the evening continues and Charles Purcell’s Eric starts to come across as too passive till he explodes. Crucially, I never really warmed to the core relationships. I didn’t see a lot of love between Eric and Toby, despite the script’s protestations. Similarly, Eric and Henry’s attraction felt forced. I don’t think they were helped by the set design which felt mismatched and awkward in its proportions.

The script itself has started to age in incidental ways. Complaints about “where is the biopic of Bayard Rustin?” fall flat when you can just log into Netflix and watch one right now. Jokes about “when Hilary Clinton wins” don’t quite hit now that we have more distance from the 2016 US election and are faced with another wearying Trump cycle. Also, a joke about long plays “with two intervals” doesn’t really work when this production only has one per part! Conversely lines about Eric’s obscenely low rent get more laughs in the middle of a rental crisis.

The one thing missing (and forgive me a direct comparison here) is tears. The mic-drop, emotional kicks were missing. I’ve not seen this play fail to elicit sniffles and out-right weeping before, especially from men who lived through AIDS. Whether it is because the audience seemed to be an even split between homo and heterosexual, or because Aussies are more stoically uptight than Brits and Americans, I’m just not sure.

It was great to see The Inheritance again in a smaller, intimate venue. The original was never better than when it was first staged at The Young Vic in London (despite the script being a lot less polished), things lost their edge once it moved into the large theatre spaces of the West End and Broadway. Here too, the intimacy gives it an advantage – it makes this very big play feel small and inviting. If you’re holding off buying tickets to this or the Seymour Centre production in Sydney this November, don’t. Get them now. This is a great play and deserves to be seen.