The Inheritance premiered in 2018 in London, and opened on Broadway in 2019. It won the Tony Award for Best Play, the Olivier Award for Best New Play, the Drama League Award, the London Critics Circle Award, and on and on. The show, about the challenges faced by several generations of gay men in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis, was hailed as “the most important play of the century”—and The Bent is now producing Part One.
Part Two is planned for this October, when The Bent opens its fourth season at the Palm Springs Cultural Center—and if that is not enough to get you running to see it, the writing is just magical. The show is full of surprises.
This powerful play is written by Matthew Lopez, whose photo makes him look way too young to have experienced the world he writes about. Research! Set in New York, the show deals with the time period from about the late 1970s into this century.
With an all-male cast, The Inheritance is like nothing you have ever seen before. When you enter the theater, you may be taken aback by the stark and dramatic curtains hanging on the sides and back of the stage. (Did they enlarge the stage? Or is this an illusion created by set designer Jason Reale?) The drapes start out white, but the lighting changes their colors as the mood of the show changes, thanks to lighting designer Nick Wass. They also fill with gigantic projected images during the play.
A passionate note in the program from The Bent’s artistic director, Steve Rosenbaum, talks about his experience of discovering this play and bringing it to life here in the valley. He also directs here, and you can see the huge amount of time and effort he personally has put into creating “the tales of our LGBTQ+ family.”
The audience was repeatedly advised that this was a two-intermission play, but the time just flew by—because this may just be one of the most absorbing plays ever created. The audience’s breathless response to it proved that; throughout the show, you literally could have heard a pin drop. I have never seen an audience so completely caught up … yet the play will make you laugh, too! There are some wonderful lines, like one about music: “I don’t think I know Ravel—what has he done?” The writing really is amazing.
There are a lot of references that will go over some heads (including mine). A lot of it is New York stuff, like about the Hamptons, but some of it has to do with The Time Back Then. There are mentions of, for example, the movie The Deer Hunter, which I actually saw at its premiere in Toronto, where its violence caused a fistfight to break out in the audience. For anyone who remembers those times, there are a lot of memories waiting—but it helps to have someone with you to explain that “the orgy in the pines” is a reference to Fire Island. Who knew?
The heartbreak and terror of the AIDS crisis is still fresh in many people’s minds. The show talks about the initial freedom of that time, followed by its unthinkable horror, followed by the medical breakthroughs. There is some interesting chatter about what it means to be gay these nowadays, the definition of camp, and the decline in the number of gay bars—all fun. But then one character chills us by saying, “There are still people who hate us.” Gulp …
The actors, all 10 of them, are to be congratulated for their hard work. The script for this play is daunting, to say the least, but Rosenbaum is up to the task. The blocking is consistently beautiful, with the entire stage being used to fan out the actors. Moving this huge cast around so smoothly that everything feels natural shows his shrewd planning.
Almost all the actors (except newcomer Brian Newkirk, who doesn’t appear until the second act) play more than one role. Congrats to James Anthony Blanco, Ronny Borelli, Kai Brothers, Travis Creston Detwiler, Samuel Moffatt, Willie Mullins, Alex Price, Thomas Dodge Wheatley, Brian Newkirk and Terry Ray: You are all part of an unforgettable production. You gave me goose bumps—several times. (I must say that the monologue done by Terry Ray is possibly the longest speech ever made by any actor on any stage—and he performs it flawlessly.)
My sole criticism has to do with the sound. The actors all speak very fast, which gives the show its exciting energy and wonderful timing, but too often, they depended on their face microphones to carry their words, and either they dropped their volume at the ends of sentences, or they sacrificed clarity for speed—and as a result, the audience sometimes missed important parts of lines. It may be possible to be too fast, but it is impossible to be too clear.
This presentation is not for the faint of heart—or for those who can’t handle partial nudity or simulated sex, because they get right into it in the first act.
What actually is The Inheritance, and to whom does it go? You’ll have to see the play to discover it. Part of the surprise is finding out—and learning what it means to us today. I can’t wait to see Part Two in October!
The Bent’s production of The Inheritance, Part One will be performed at 7 p.m., Thursday through Saturday; and 2 p.m., Sunday, through Saturday, May 25, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, 2300 E. Baristo Road, in Palm Springs. Tickets are $42. For tickets or more information, visit thebent.org.
