THE NEWYORKER, DECEMBER 2, 2019 75
adapt it for the stage. To Eric, marriage
seems a fait accompli, but when Toby
senses the cage of intimacy lowering
over him he bolts.
Readers of Forster’s novel will recog-
nize, in the magnetic, vain Toby, some
of the qualities of Helen, the reckless
younger Schlegel sister, and, in Eric, those
of the more grounded, cerebral Margaret.
But though Lopez has drawn on For-
ster’s characters and plot, he isn’t afraid
to break from his source—Leonard Bast,
Forster’s pathetic, impoverished clerk,
who gets enmeshed with the Schlegels,
for instance, has been turned into two
characters, a guileful actor and an abused
sex worker (Samuel H. Levine takes on
both roles)—and to have quippy, comic
fun with it.
Even Forster enjoys himself—at least,
Lopez’s Morgan does. He presides over
the first part of the play, guiding and en-
couraging the men onstage. His pres-
ence makes literal Lopez’s theme of cul-
tural transmission and community, which
is on display everywhere in the play, most
clearly in its staging. Though the set is
almost propless, the vast Barrymore stage
essentially transformed into a black box,
Daldry (with the help of Bob Crowley,
the play’s designer) makes the space feel
amply inhabited, grouping any off-duty
members of his exuberant, winning cast
of fourteen around the raised platform
where the action takes place. Sitting
cross-legged on cushions, they look like
they are out to dinner at a Japanese
restaurant, though they behave more like
ballroom scenesters, hooting and snap-
ping at what they see.
Sex, in Forster’s novel, is a twin force
of death and life, but metaphorically so.
There is nothing figurative about that
binary for Lopez’s men, who belong to
a generation that came after the one
decimated by aids. Still, with Truvada
and other antiretrovirals, most of them
take their health for granted; the past is,
if not buried, at least contained. For Eric,
however, it becomes increasingly real,
especially after he grows close to Wal-
ter, who has moved into an apartment
above his. Walter tells Eric that, in the
eighties, at the height of the plague, he
and Henry bought a house upstate where
they could live together in protected iso-
lation. Soon, though, Walter, repulsed
by his own weakness, began, against
Henry’s wishes, to invite sick friends to
the house and to care for them as they
died. Later, Eric visits the property (it
is represented onstage by a doll’s house)
and is surprised to hear someone call his
name. What follows is a magical com-
munion of the living and the dead, one
of the most moving stage pictures I’ve
seen: a special effect that relies not on
technical wizardry but on the power of
bodies sharing the same space for a brief,
impossible moment in time.A
ll told, “The Inheritance” is a seven-
hour affair—nine, if you see it in
one day, with a break for dinner—and,
although I recommend the first half
without reservation, it may not be worth
your while, or your dollars, to return for
the second, in which Lopez lets his fleet,
funny sensibility settle into something
regrettably more teachy and preachy.
There’s a pandering, stagy political de-
bate and too many Big Messages wrapped
in tearful professions. The tone turns
saccharine and then, with a sex-work
subplot that could be ripped from a nine-
teenth-century penny dreadful, maud-
lin. “I wasted so much time,” one char-
acter says, and another tells him, “You
have so much left.” A monologue deliv-
ered by Margaret (Lois Smith), the for-
merly homophobic mother of one of
Walter’s hospice patients and the sole
woman to appear in the play, tugs so ge-
nerically at the heartstrings that it had
me rolling my eyes. Stripped of specific-
ity, the speech feels like moral coddling,
a self-congratulatory display of penance
for the like-minded audience to eat up.
Forster was concerned with moral
harm, and with the difficult necessity of
trying to forgive it. For all his intelli-
gence and sensitivity, Lopez dodges that
particular challenge, letting the produc-
tive conflict between Eric’s idealism and
Henry’s grizzled, cynical pragmatism
dissipate, rather than resolve. To only
connect with those who agree with you
may be the motto we deserve these days,
but it is not one that bodes well. Like
Forster, who was determined to give the
lovers in “Maurice” a happy ending, Lopez
doles out contentment and redemption.
How much more satisfying it would have
been if he had asked his audience to con-
sider what makes redemption matter:
not just coming to the “right” point of
view but having made the effort to look,
to think, to struggle, and then to change. MAKE CHANGE
FOR CHILDREN
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quiet and lethargic. A Save the Children
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act from you can create a ripple
of change that spreads to children,
families and communities like Jasmine’s.savethechildren.org/change
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