The Toronto Theatre Review: Canadian Stage’s production of The Inheritance

By Ross

Inheritance

Arriving at the Canadian premiere of The Inheritance, I could barely contain my excitement (just ask the press person whom I’ve been hounding for months for opening night tickets). Produced by Canadian Stage at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto and opening on World Theatre Day, The Inheritance holds one of the greatest places in my theatrical heart, enveloping my soul with its clever and emotional writing and captivating spiritual connection to the ideas of life-long friendship, love, and loss. Hanging out in a focused bubble on the wide sparse stage, around a long table with an assortment of chairs, matching the assortment of men, they sit, processing and tuning themselves into the written task before them and before us as we take our seats.

It’s a glorious invitation to join, this initial set-up, adding weight and connection to the excitement that hangs most beautifully and thoughtfully in the air thanks to the tender direction of Brendan Healy (Canadian Stage’s Every Brilliant Thing). The setting, designed carefully, warmly, and organically by Michael Gianfrancesco (Stratford’s Chicago), with subtle lighting by Kimberly Purtell (Stratford’s Frankenstein Revived), straightforward costuming by Ming Wong (CS’s Is God Is) and a solid sound design by music composer Richard Feren (Grand’s Controlled Damage), hangs a bit differently in that space than the production that I first saw in London’s West End, and subsequently on Broadway. It has a more earthen tone and quality, drawing us into the quality of engagement through sweet proximity. These characters, introduced slowly over the course of Part One of two 3-hour segments, really do feel like a close gaggle of friends, drawn together for the purpose of understanding their friendships and relationships to one another through a writing project headed by an iconic character who has a lot to offer these vital young men.

The play, after premiering at London’s Young Vic in 2018, where it was called “the most important American play of the century,” transferred to the West End later that year, and then opened on Broadway in 2019. The Inheritance quickly became one of the most honored American plays of this generation, sweeping the “Best Play” awards in both London and New York including the Tony Award, Olivier Award, Drama Desk Award, Evening Standard Award, London Critics Circle Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award, WhatsOnStage Award, and the Southbank Sky Arts Award. It is often compared to Angels in America in both a positive and negative light, and rightly so, as it clearly is a homage-creation based on the same epic proportions of its predecessor. It pushes itself solidly before us, somewhere to the right of Kushner’s far more ethereal exploration of AIDS in America back in the day. Engaging with a slightly more aggressive and political stance, playwright Matthew Lopez (The Legend of Georgia McBride, Some Like It Hot; “Red, White, and Royal Blue“) dares us to look deep into its imperfect but devastatingly emotional six acts and seven hours.  Angels is considered by many as the “most beautiful and far-reaching introduction to a place and time representing the History of Gay America in the 1980s “, and to even attempt to align himself and his play with that signpost is a brave act of determination. But even in that weighted comparison, The Inheritance is most decidedly a masterpiece, almost measuring up to Kushner’s triumph as it dives head-first into 21st-century queer politics and the economic discrepancies that plague modern culture and society through the eyes of a pack of well-intentioned gay men in New York City.

I just had to watch, read, and rewatch the magnificent Howard’s End, the classic novel by E. M. Forster, before seeing The Inheritance once again (3rd time’s the charm, I might add), after falling in love with the 1992 movie many years ago. That beautifully orchestrated film, produced by Merchant Ivory stars the amazing Emma Thompson as Margaret Schlegel, Helena Bonham Carter as sister Helen, Vanessa Redgrave as Ruth Wilcox, Anthony Hopkins as her wealthy husband, Henry, and Samuel West as the pitiful but lovely Leonard Bast. It has been described as a touching deconstruction and examination of the three social classes of Edwardian England at the beginning of the 20th Century. The Wilcoxes are considered the Victorian capitalists, with the Schlegel sisters as the enlightened bourgeois brimming over with humanistic and philanthropic tendencies, and the young Bast standing in for the struggling working-class intellect fighting hard to survive in London as a mere clerk.

The dual plot of the novel and film delicately revolves around a deathbed wish by Ruth, the sickly and ignored wife of Henry Wilcox, a man of significant wealth, who bequeaths her beloved country house, Howards End, to her dear friend, Margaret, and not one of her children or husband. The Wilcox family deems this request as financially non-binding and decides to not give the house away, nor tell Margaret, even with the knowledge that she has become, over the last little while, a new and very dear kindred spirit to Henry. 

Meanwhile, Margaret’s sister Helen has taken a strong interest, mostly philanthropic, in Leonard Bast, a poor married working-class clerk, who slowly descends the ladder of success, mainly because of Henry Wilcox’s un-asked for advice at Helen’s insistence and interference. As Margaret gravitates towards Henry Wilcox after Ruth’s death, eventually becoming engaged to the man, Helen becomes more and more aligned with Leonard. The parallels to The Inheritance are striking and extremely well formulated, thanks to the diligence of playwright Lopez, with clever shifts and alterations that make complete sense, but with a connective depth that really pulls us all in from this very modern and gay-male perspective.

It’s no wonder that the ambitious Lopez was struck by the political and social layers of Howards End, seeing within a construct that could fit somewhere inside the psyche of this new generation of gay men, especially taking into account Edward Morgan Forster’s own personal battle with visibility, authenticity, and hiw own hidden closeted sexuality. Paying a certain homage to the fore-bearers of gay culture, The Inheritance tackles, with aplomb, a tremendous amount of complicated territory, diving headfirst into the political landscape of the last ten years or so in modern America. It owes itself more to the closeted E. M. Foster than Kushner though, delivering a monumental piece about the turbulent lives of a group of young, ambitious gay New Yorkers floundering and excelling, just like the Schlegels. This go-round, Forster’s engaging sisters are now Lopez’s complicated lovers, sometime after the peak of the AIDs crisis in New York City, living the life of the somewhat privileged, even if they don’t realize it.

They are unconsciously strutting proudly through the newly informed gay frontier of sexual liberation and love relationships, with marriage equality readily at hand, and the upcoming and disturbing loss of fellow travelers to addiction with abandonment standing just outside their door. Spanning generations of attachments and the entanglement of lives and loves, The Inheritance bridges the themes of E. M. Forster’s novel and attaches itself to the past and present New York City, while trying with all its might to understand the legacy that threads the two together and what the two worlds owe one another in the realm of care and thoughtfulness.

One by one the men at the core of this drama find their place in this fantastic unraveling. The space easily serves up this deliciously prepared feast. We aren’t exactly sure who the main storyteller is in those first few moments, but all these men seem to be in need of some guidance to write the stories of their lives. “Let’s have a look“, and so they turn, most delicately and decisively to the wise and structured E. Morgan Forster, played with sweet composition by the glorious Daniel MacIvor (Tarragon’s White Biting Dog). With his steady and kind repressed hand most beautifully crafted and delivered, the hounds of a rethought Howards End are released into the space. Directed with impeccable care, the oral history of flawed engagement goes strongly forward, diving in full force while following the antiquated Queensbury rules as it attempts to know thyself, the mythical story of the healing bark, the implanted pig’s teeth, and the tangled web of The Inheritance.

It all starts with a voicemail, a few of them actually, to introduce us to the gentle and kind Eric Glass, played to perfection by the wonderful Qasim Khan (Stratford’s The Miser) and his boyfriend, the pleasure-seeking Toby Darling, a writer of narcissistic impression, played fully by the captivating Antoine Yared (Groundling’s King Lear). “Eric Glass did not believe he was special“, we are told,  and while that personal affliction never enters the mind of Toby,  Yared’s sensual young writer saunters with an entitled, falsely-created pride, although his past doesn’t support his construct. Toby has written an acclaimed and self-described autobiographic novel, based on that same insincere construct, and then quickly started to adapt it for the stage. He believes in his power far more than the gentle Eric does in his own, and even as they are presented initially as the love-struck couple, we see the cracks and the mismatched puzzle pieces fighting to fit together far before the foreseeable destruction that comes in the form of a duality thrust upon them, reminiscent of Forster’s Leonard Bast. But not exactly.

The contrast expands, especially in that deliciously sexual interaction between these two with the observant MacIvor’s Morgan on the side. The wry wonderfully inventive moment encapsulates all that this play is attempting to lay out; the levels of advancement and the traps we all can fall into. With Lopez replacing umbrellas with Strand Bookshop bags, the introduction of Adam McDowall, portrayed with breathtaking awkwardness by Stephen Jackman-Torkoff (Stratford’s Richard II), one of the threads that will lead to destruction and enlightenment, is off and running with a clarity and authentic-ness that is appealing and forever heart-breaking. Jackman-Torkoff does an excellent job playing the leading man-to-be, a stand-in of half sorts of Forster’s Bast, although dramatically and financially not one and the same. He is basically a hat-trick sleight-of-hand that will become apparent later on. His initial introduction to the cast of found-family:  the proud activist Jasper, dynamically portrayed by the solid Salvatore Antonio (CS’s Domesticated); the best friend Tristan, played somewhat flat by the show’s choreographer Hollywood Jade (Drayton’s Beautiful); the appealing husbands, Jason #1 and Jason #2, joyfully and wittily portrayed by Aldrin Bundoc (Buddies’ Body Politic) and Breton Lalama (Soulpepper’s King Lear/Queen Goneril); and the other young passionate men: Landon Nesbitt (Odyssey’s The Miser), who also beautifully portrays the young Walter; Ben Page (Bad Hats/Soulpepper’s Alice in Wonderland) who also plays the young Henry; and Gregory Prest (Soulpepper’s Of Human Bondage) who also aggressively portrays Charles Wilcox and Toby’s frustrated agent;  leaves us all, including Eric and Toby, wanting more and more of the complex Adam creation. He’s a lucky orphan adopted into wealth and privilege, in a way that only Toby could dream of, but also as manipulative and seductive as the blind and willing writer can be. The impressiveness of Jackman-Torkoff also presents itself later on, ratcheting up the drama most determinedly by playing the other slide of Forster’s Leonard Bast, the downtrodden and emotionally abused and discarded Leo with a powerfully emotional delicacy that makes it harder and harder to see them personified by only one person. It’s a forceful creation, this bipolar splitting of Bast, and one that flowers wildly and beautifully the deeper we go into the unfolding history of The Inheritance.

Another thread that most beautifully transcribes Howards End into this modern and complicated century is the moment we are given the phenomenal MacIvor as the Ruth stand-in, Walter, the ignored husband of Henry Wilcox. “I’m the man who fell in love with Henry,” he says, as he ushers forth a pitch-perfect portrayal of love emerging and being discarded by the powerful and wealthy Henry, played most elegantly and intelligently by Jim Mezon (CS’s The Other Place). Backtracking effectively alongside, we are given a glimpse into the formulation of the love between the Young Walter and Henry, deepening the unfathomable attachment most majestically, compassionately, and intelligently. Their love and bond are given spiritual meaning in that paralleling, and because of that, it also becomes one of the core heartbreaks. Mezon’s Henry doesn’t actually enter into the gathering until much later, but Eric Glass and Walter’s friendship, a beautiful recreation of Redgrave/Thompson’s Ruth and Margaret, finds beautiful form and depth with a tense ease. His dinner party unpacking of what it was like to live through the AIDS pandemic at its height is devastatingly brilliant in its unwrapping, giving the play its strongest moment of emotional heartache and pain. It will truly take your breath away.

In one of the other, most delicious re-imaginings of the dinner scene, lifted straight from the Merchant/Ivory film when Redgrave struggles to understand Margaret and her friend’s feisty involvement in the Suffrage movement, the internal bond between Eric and Walter seems to materialize organically within the political activism of Eric’s friends. Lopez does this alignment a solid slice of justice with a gay oral history told passionately by a greek chorus of gay male friends at Eric’s 35th birthday party brunch. This Camp discourse is full on and deliberate, hitting hard and wide, even when not exactly feeling completely authentic or organic. Lopez can get preachy and informative at times, in a way that feels unnecessary for half the crowd, but possibly very important for the others, like the young artistic Tucker, lovingly portrayed by Nesbitt who stands in for all the young gay men who have no clue. It is left up to Walter and ultimately Henry later on, to make these young men understand the agonies that his generation faced when AIDS devastated a whole swath of their generation, a result that I personally know and carry as deeply and strongly as many others my age. “THERE ARE NO GAY MEN MY AGE. Not nearly enough,” states Henry, and rightly so. It’s a thought that puts a huge lump in my throat every time that truism passes through my brain. Even as I write that line. It squeezes my heart, which lives somewhere between grief/loss and the deep complication of survivor guilt.

Finishing out Part I of The Inheritance, Lopez vividly propels us into the dynamic theatrical destruction of their caring narrator; a device that served the first three acts so well and is somewhat missed in Part II (although it makes complete sense). The emotional tear in our collective hearts that flow testify to the delicacy of the writing and the poignancy of the truth that Lopez is trying to enlist.  It sometimes feels manipulative yet profound, but the depth of disappointment in Henry and his two sons (Antonio, Prest) is magnificently inflamed by their decision to ignore Walter’s deathbed request, and the imbalances of empathy and emotional thought are blatantly exposed. He throws forward the further collapse of our faith in humanity with the Hilary question, “Are you sure she’s going to win?” That scene, election night 2016, and other interactions pile on the parallels between the superficial decadence of the modern gay man’s lifestyle of prosperity and the rigid class system of Edwardian England, stomping forth the complicated inequalities that define our own need for external validation and instant gratification. The social system, although less cleanly defined, still does just that, with Henry Wilcox as the billionaire gay Republican at one end, and the homeless rent boy, Leo addicted to crystal meth at the other, even as the thin thread of disavowed connection between the two comes to the surface for a grasp of air. There is “a difference in morality“, Jasper (Antonio) defiantly declares, but does wealth and privilege, sprouted forward quite remarkably by Wilcox at his brunch meeting with Eric’s friends, negate the advances of civil rights and the gay movements forward? Does this imbalance demolish the concept of equal opportunity for all, even those without a huge bank balance to buy their influence?  Leo’s poverty rings true, but it’s really inside Toby’s destruction of Morgan that decidedly brings Part One to an emotional close. Somewhere, thanks to the beautiful writing, the cruel and ultimately deadly blow to the narrator, Forster, hits hard.

It’s difficult to even discuss the last few moments of Part One. It floats in with the strongest of punches, introducing and delivering the pain of loss and lives ending far too soon and too young. The Canadian Stage production takes on a different stance than the West End and Broadway productions to differing results. On Broadway, we are enveloped in the emotional loss of lives cut short as a sea of young, beautiful men surround the dumb-struck and honored Eric. It transports the grief and sense of loss as the youthful air of promising futures fade before us. But here, in this delicately crafted and utterly thoughtful production, we are shown the infinite vastness of the disease’s destruction and the wide scope of the affected/infected. It’s a strong compassionate positioning, that unpacks a construct different than its predecessors. It may not have overwhelmed me with tears like the Part One finale did when I saw it before, but it did expand something else. An idea that is worth engaging with, and even when prepared for what floats in, the moment still demolished my heart and senses.

The next night, arriving back for the continuation of The Inheritance, Morgan is gone, for the most part, and the meaninglessness of faux art and Fire Island Pines partying is all the rage. Civil rights have advanced, far beyond the closeted Forster’s era, but trouble remains as clear and disconcerting as ever, with friendships fracturing, partnerships dissolving, and the abandonment of one another being the biggest disease of the modern gay man. The familial gathering of community is fractured, going from communal table to dance floor to graveyard, as the pack finds themselves fighting for our Nation’s soul, while leading us to a ghostlike apparition that digs deep into our hearts and breaks all resistance down. Toby makes his re-entrance in style (“Did you miss me?”) dragging the beautiful, tender, and damaged Leo down a beach boardwalk to destruction, crashing a wedding and himself in that order. “Who said anything about falling in love?” is the phrase of the sun-drenched, awkwardly staged dance party. Leo’s stumble and fall is as scary as they come, but it’s in his engagement with the returning Morgan looking down from up above that makes an appointment with emotional heartbreak.

There are no role models for gay men anymore, no one to pass down the inheritance of history or the bitter inheritance of death and destruction. The responsibility of gay men to care for one another; this is what has not been taught, passed on, or learned. It’s only when Eric removes his high-end dress shoes and returns to himself that salvation comes before us all. It is in the care of the house that forever truly belonged to Eric where we become emotionally transfixed, long before any of us are even aware how perfect a fit it all is.

That return also ushers in the engaging Louise Pitre (Broadway’s Mamma Mia!) as Walter’s upstage house caretaker Margaret, a part that was wonderfully portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave when it first opened in London’s West End, completing a circle of engagement that is deliciously sweet. Margaret’s story is thoroughly engaging and utterly brutal, traversing all that is at stake in The Inheritance. It’s a ‘passing-down’ moment, an Inheritance of history, love, pain, and connectivity with the likes of Forster and Kushner, neatly encompassing all the themes of community, engagement, art, dysfunction, and the alignment of love and care. “You’ve seen them too,” she says to Eric, and in that moment of connection, the play acknowledges all and more of the young men whose lives have been unnecessarily cut short. They arrived at this house with their complicated and tragic need for salvation, and found forever peace inside- although I didn’t love the overly symbolic structuring of the house and its open book visual. Still, it’s heartbreakingly haunting, and deftly unwrapped for us as we struggle to retain what it’s like to be hopeful.

The performances, even with the occasional Canadian “sorry”, revel in the brittle difficulty of this modern age, finding truth and togetherness against the force of humanity and this difficult time we find ourselves living within. “How much do I matter?” is where the power and thought-provoking center lives. Surrounded by ghosts of men who were lost before their time, The Inheritance is guaranteed to bring forth tears, even when put off a bit here and there with its overly simplistic dive into crystal meth, sexual addiction, and internal political and personal exploration. Those tales are complicated ones, clinging to our flesh like unwanted bacteria, but it’s also an important invader that must be rectified in order for our community to come together. “Heal or Burn“, states a desperate Toby. It’s a rallying cry that’s as important as any. 

Forster’s Howards End, much like his Maurice, is gorgeous and deep, and as told in the beloved Merchant/Ivory film and reformulated by Lopez into this epic masterpiece, The Inheritance delivers on so many levels of observation and deconstruction on class structure and sociopolitical decrees that it is a wonder that it works as well as it does. Lopez finds his way through these themes expertly and constructs them delicately and compassionately into a different time and place while simultaneously holding true to the questions the story raises. It plays on Forster’s Maurice and the gay civil rights movement with clarity and sweet charm, opening up a dialogue on diversity and privilege while developing ideas of prosperity and poverty that impact our fearlessness and pride.

The Inheritance is an exhausting and exhilarating way to spend a few nights in the theatre, whether it is in London’s West End, on Broadway, or at the Blume Appel Theatre in Toronto. The journey is well intended, containing truths that need to be told and a message to all of us to try to do better. The ending struggled to enter my soul as much as the rest of this long “400-page” play that seems to be co-created by its ancestors and predecessors. They speak of a future that we know nothing about, one that feels too rosy and optimistic, especially with all the dreadful realness of the world that we see around us, where the Orange Monster still terrorizes and “faggot” is still a hostile and purposeful snarl. I hope they are right, though, and the difficulty to see brightness and clarity in our collective future is misguided. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.