Matthew Lopez & Company Explain What THE INHERITANCE is All About!

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

One of this season's most eagerly awaited theatrical events is playwright Matthew Lopez's two-parter The Inheritance

Following a critically acclaimed run in London, it will open here at the Barrymore Theater on November 17th

and we drop by to meet the cast during a break in rehearsal. It all started with my desire to take my favorite novel, Howard's End

and retell it as a gay story in the 21st century. And pretty much every decision that I made after that came from that initial impulse

This whole entire process has been me looking at EM Forster and saying

what would you have written if you were alive today? And trying to honor that, but also bringing myself to it as well

It's very important to me that the play be funny. It wasn't anything I ever really intended to do

but as we started working on it, I was like, this play needs to have life in it

It needs to feel alive. It can't feel like eat your vegetables

It can't feel like a six-and-a-half-hour-long history lesson. The things that we arrive at, the course of the play are arrived at

I hope honestly, because we ask the audience to laugh as much as they do

which, of course, is a perfect way to ask an audience to start caring about characters, to feel invested in their journey

And especially when we're asking an audience to take a very long, epic journey with us

we need the audience to feel taken care of, we need the audience to feel like they're in a very warm place

that want to continue to come back to act after act after act all day long

I play Eric Glass in The Inheritance, who is based on the character of Margaret Schlegel in Howard's End, played by Emma Thompson in the film

And I only make that distinction because I'd love to be Emma Thompson in my life. But in any case, Eric is a gay 30-something New Yorker

Jewish grew up on the Upper West Side, inherited a rent-controlled apartment from his grandparents who were immigrants

And like Margaret in Howard's End, Eric is an idealist. and has a very strong moral code and a spiritual code that he attempts to live by in the modern world but he gets blown off course and um yeah winds up discovering the man who he truly is through the play

Toby's vivacity, his appetite for life, for language, he truly grabs life by the horns and lives it

to the fullest degree. And I so admire that about him. He can walk into a room, take control of it

He wants to party. He wants to have a good time. He wants everyone around him to have a good time. He's sort of like the

innocent baby of the group who just wants to laugh and tell stories

and he's very, very witty and clever and funny. And it's just

for an actor to be able to step into shoes like that, to

try and fill them each and every night is it doesn't get any better than this

Warmth, lovingness, humor and being in it is like that. I mean, this company

is embodying That spirit, embodying it and giving it away to the audience

Oh, what a treat, really. I am so happy to be working on this play

I did it in London for a year. I fell in love with it the minute I read it

The minute I heard Stephen Daldry was directing it, I was like, I actually said yes before I even read it

Because when a director like that wants you to do a project

only a fool would say no. And then I read Matthew's play, and I just was completely floored by it

And I was floored by how humane and heartbreaking it was, but mainly I love how funny he is

I think not since Terrence McNally. Have we had a voice in the American theater that is so alive with a comic spirit

that can also come in and pierce you in the heart in the best possible way

It's a real gymnasium this particular piece as well. Once you step on the stage I don leave the stage until the end of part one Once you in it you in it And regardless of you know where the performance takes you that particular day

you start at A and you finish at Z. You go on the whole journey with the audience

and that's a unique and powerful thing to share with an audience

Yeah, I think you can't write a play about New York and not have it be funny

I mean, it's in our blood, you know. we have to laugh to get through the delayed trains and to get through the massive amounts of tourists and the everything

And so we got to laugh. And it's through that laughing that we also can kind of collectively get to a deeper level of understanding to experience the more emotional parts of the play

It's a laugh right. I mean, we, it's so funny because when you're in rehearsals, like you

You get accustomed to the jokes, but like when you have an audience, they always, they just tickle us

Like there will be moments on stage where we're like, we didn't know that it was that funny

So like we're laughing at the audience reaction. And then like seeing Andrew and Kyle do something new at night, like it just blows

It blows us up. It's amazing. I always think if you're trying to send something with a message through, you're trying to get something important across

the best way to get through people is to make them laugh first. And Matthew wrote such a great comedic piece

and especially the way it's structured, we start with really light, funny stuff

and we sort of weave in the really intense stuff. And by the time we get to that stuff

we've disarmed the audience so beautifully that I think we handle it really well

It's also not just how actors connect, but I think how queer people connect

is a lot of times through laughter. And so to, like, understand a queer community now today

you have to sort of laugh with them first. And they also did a really good job

of casting a bunch of goofballs to come in and make really already funny moments even funnier

So, yeah, it's a really fun environment to work with. The really great thing about doing a play is that you with a whole cast of people who you get to know very well and who you come to really fall in love with And that happened here It happened quickly here I mean we been in rehearsals for a little while now but I really fallen in love with a lot of the people in the play

And it's important for such a long play, especially, that there is a common purpose among us

and a bond that is unbreakable. There's actually so many funny moments

There's so much fun. The relationships between Toby Darry, Darling and Eric Glass is hysterical

I mean, there's so many fun moments between Eric and his friends and Toby and his friends

that you don't even realize that you're seeing something that might have a lot of weight to it

until a while into the play. You're like, oh, yeah, this is about something actually quite intense that has happened throughout our history

But we find so much joy in the happy times, too, that these characters have had with each other

So it's a lot of fun, a lot of laughs. This play means so much to so many people

The response that we've gotten from the stage door has been so impactful that we get to hear their stories

And you actually get to spend time with them after the show while you're signing playbills or posters

They get to connect with you and kind of tell you their story, which is kind of at the end of the day the best part about it because we weren't around when the epidemic happened

And so we get to relate to so many people and hear their side of their story

And it kind of just gives us more fuel for the fire because it's a long show. but hearing what we're doing to the audience is it just makes it all that much more impactful

and gives us the fire to make it through an eight show week with this seven-hour play. It really is a blessing, you know, I mean, I think that so many queer people, you know

they, you know, we create these communities, we create these families, you know

that are separate from our own and it's, and it's about being seen. It's about, like, receiving that, like, understood and, like, being recognized

And, I mean, to be a part, I mean, it's a blessing to be a part of a show that is, like

really about, like, creating a chosen family, you know? And yeah, I mean, I'm grateful for the families that have like opened their doors to me

And I'm grateful for the families that I created within my friend groups. And, you know, without them, you know, I wouldn't, I would, I feel like I wouldn't be able to have gone as far as I have, you know