149
this one out. “They were not showing
it in Panama City; that’s for sure,” he
says, laughing, “and it was not avail-
able at the local Blockbuster.” When
he finally watched the film and then
researched Forster’s life, he recalls
thinking, “Holy shit, this is Howards
End but gay!” The revelation gave
Lopez “the notion of retelling How-
ards End as a queer story,” and six
years ago the writer (who won
acclaim for his 2006 breakout play
The Whipping Man) set out to “rein-
vestigate” the book. Lopez wrote
every word of his original draft at a
Brooklyn writers’ space, often work-
ing until three in the morning and
even on Christmas Eve.
The result, as Andrew Burnap dis-
covered during one of four major
workshops that spanned two years,
was “a beautiful mess” that ran some
10 hours. Burnap had been starring
as a sad-sack Elvis impersonator
turned stellar drag queen in Lopez’s
comedic play The Legend of Georgia
McBride in Los Angeles but knew
nothing about the new play until his
manager sent him the script. “I read
it at night,” he recalls. “I started at
nine and finished at six. For the sake
of my roommates, I was trying to
keep the weeping to a dull roar and
muffle the laughing as well—because
I also found it wildly funny.”
During the workshop, Burnap
played one of the young men in the
circle of friends, but he was eventu-
ally asked to step in and play the part
of Toby. “I even told him, ‘You’re too
young for the role, but you’d be doing
me a huge favor,’ ” Lopez recalls.
Months later, Burnap got a call while
he was driving in L.A. “I pulled over
and sort of felt that my life was about
to change,” he remembers. Burnap
had never been to Europe before he
traveled for the play; the new produc-
tion will mark his Broadway debut.
His fellow cast member Kyle Soller
received the 400-page script the day
before his audition. Undaunted, he
finished reading it on the subway en
route to the audition. “I felt there was
something special in my hands,”
Soller recalls. “The characters are sofully formed and three-dimensional,
and Matthew’s writing is heartbreak-
ing and poetic in equal measure.”
(Soller’s performance won him both
the Olivier and Critics’ Circle Theatre
Award for Best Actor.)
“It was something that hits you like
a ton of bricks,” says actor Samuel H.
Levine of Lopez’s writing. (The actor
admits that he “had no idea” who For-
ster was when he embarked on The
Inheritance. “Now I feel like I know
him,” he says.) Levine plays both
Adam, a young actor on a blazing
meteor’s arc, and Leo, a hustler on the
reverse trajectory. Having dropped out
of school, Levine was working in a
restaurant when he was called in to do
the workshop. “I thought, There’s no
way in hell I am ever going to do this,”
he recalls, “so let’s just let it rip,” and
that unharnessed energy helped to
secure him the dual roles of the verydifferent characters. From those early
stages, Levine remembers the constant
flow of new pages. “We must have
killed a lot of trees!”
“There was just more than we could
ever stage,” Lopez admits of his first
drafts. “A play is theoretical until you
actually get it on its feet and watch it
in a run. I don’t think those early audi-
ences knew quite how much power
they had,” he adds. “They taught us
everything.” The first preview before
a Young Vic audience proved, as
Levine recalls, “overwhelmingly elec-
tric—it hit really hard, hearing the
reactions.” Burnap remembers
“sneaking into the back of the the-
ater,” during the wrenching conclusion
of act one, “and witnessing the sort
of theatrical event where everyone’s
life is changed, almost as if the entire
audience is held in suspension,” he
says. “I’m justCENTER STAGE
“A play is theoretical until you
actually get it on its feet,” says Lopez,
pictured here. In this story: hair,
PRODUCED BY LOLA PRODUCTIONS. SET DESIGN, JESSE KAUFMANN. PHOTOGRAPHED AT SERET STUDIOS.Thom Priano for R+Co. Haircare” CONTINUED ON PAGE 167