110 newyork| november25–december8, 2019
from the stage to them, handling it gently
to make clear it was a gift.
The first image in Stephen Daldry’s im-
pressive production (transferred from Lon-
don) is a raised beige platform in an other-
wise featureless black void—Bob Crowley’s
set could almost be a piece of paper. The
company gradually assembles on it: all
handsome men, all barefoot, and all writ-
ing. It’s a homosocial utopia, but it’s obvi-
ous that the blank page is also frightening.
The first narrator is Young Man 1 (Samuel
H. Levine), who speaks to us in the third
person: “He has a story to tell ... But how
does he begin? He opens his favorite novel,
hoping to find inspiration in its first famil-
iar sentence. And in reading those words,
he finds himself once again in the gentle,
reassuring presence of their author.” The
novel is Howards End, so Forster himself
(Paul Hilton) ambles out, apologetic but
affirming. The Young Man’s tale begins un-
der his guidance.
At first, it’s the story of a present-day
couple. Everyone’s a narrator, even of his
own inner state, so the men collaboratively
describe sweet Eric Glass (Kyle Soller) and
salty Toby Darling (the firework Andrew
Burnap), engaged lovers who live in Eric’s
unusually spacious apartment on the
Upper West Side. Lopez’s biggest laughs
come from the room’s total outrage about
this rent- controlled, two-bath wonderland.
Eric admits he pays only $575 a month,
and even the cast loses it: “Fuck you,” shouts
Arturo Luís Soria (a particularly valuable
player in the ensemble); the New York
audience explodes. In this preoccupation
with housing, the class- conscious stamp of
Howards End shows everywhere, though
the Forster character departs after a few
hours. (He is chastised, rather cruelly, for
having been closeted during his lifetime.)
Toby starts by describing a luscious Hamp-
tons mansion owned by the couple’s much
older friends Walter (Hilton again) and bil-
lionaire Henry (John Benjamin Hickey).
There’s a scene in a beach house on Fire
Island; Walter has a near-sacred property
up the Hudson; someone gets a key to
Gramercy Park. Male sensuality is every-
where in The Inheritance, but the most
erotic language is reserved for real estate.
A flustered young man named Adam
(Levine) follows Toby and Eric home from
a concert after a mix-up over a bag. Eric, the
friend group’s perennial host, is having a
party, and Adam begins to talk to the guests
about the music they’ve heard. A whole
room of witty men drifts toward him, mag-
netized, and the young man’s rapture over
the music turns the key in their collective
lock. Adam is folded into the pair’s lives—
they simply have to show him Jules et Jim—
but the wide-eyed, eager-to-learn, hard-“ANYONE WHO HAS THECHANCE SHOULD GOSEE SLAVE PLAY WHILEIT’S ON BROADWAY.”BROADWAY ONLY HAS SLAVE PLAYTHROUGH JANUARY 19
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