The Inheritance - Previews- Page 15

[BWAY Baby2]

Posted: 12/29/19 at 10:28pm

Lastly, I think as good as the miniseries is, I don’t find the historical fiction of well-off white people (with the exception of Jackie in the movie) that riveting. Quite ironic I know, given all the criticism that The Inheritance has received for similar issues.
 

I love all explorations of all cultures and classes if they are done with wit, intelligence and maybe a bit of humor.

Updated On: 12/30/19 at 10:28 PM

[PipingHotPiccolo]

Posted: 12/29/19 at 10:48pm

Kad said: "NativeNYer2- My apologies, but your post did make it seem as though you were the one espousing that worldview, not Lopez.

Eric's Jewishness seemed to me to exist as nothing more than a handwaved explanation for how he has his rent controlled apartment."

I hadnt seen this comment before I saw the play today, but I am surprised you had this reaction. His grandmother is mentioned more than once- in relation to the apartment, yes, but then explicitly in the context of her passing along her story from the Shoah (it was no accident this largely Israel-based term for Holocaust was used) when Eric was discussing the various communities' cultural heritages and lamenting the state of gay americans'. Eric clearly inherited from his grandmother and his family- literally the family home, and also the Shoah and the Seders he discusses. It felt like being aware of such a cultural and nationalist heritage was what highlighted the absence of one for the gay community- and thats why time was spent discussing appropriation of a similar cultural heritage, African American. 

i am liking this play more and more as the hours go by. 

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 12:00am

I saw the show for the 6th time today. I find more and more to love and admire about it each time I go. It continues to be one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen on stage.

[Wick3]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 9:00am

I believe today is the last day to buy $59 orch and $39 front mezz tickets on telecharge for Inheritance Part 1 for performances until Feb 27th.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 8:01pm

Every Pt 1 performance but Saturday afternoon* was available on TDF today for the next 2 weeks. Three Pt. 2 performances (Wednesday nights, a Sunday in between). It was the only play to dip last week, holidays. Two people here keep telling me the show is doing well, if I'd only "check Telecharge" I'd know it's selling (I did for a weeknight in late January; wide open). But as an admirer of the piece and its production, I don't see strong evidence, and TDF is decidedly an indicator. The rear mezz was empty in December. Agree or disagree, take advantage of TDF or other sales while you can. If you plan to see this beautiful staging, go now. 

*Update: the Saturday matinee 1/11 is up. Grab it; Saturday matinees have not generally been as available on TDF. 

Updated On: 1/3/20 at 08:01 PM

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 9:36pm

I wish I could say I was as big a fan of this show as Jordan above. 63-year-old gay Jewish ex-New Yorker that I am, I was hoping at last to see some version of MY story on a Broadway stage. I loved a whole host of moments but this 7 hour marathon was frankly a letdown for me. (My husband and our friend we saw the shows with, both gays in their mid-50's felt similarly.)

I thought Eric's story was fascinating and beautifully acted, and absolutely deserved a lovely 3 hour play devoted to his story and his world. But the other major characters in the cast (Toby, Adam/Leo and especially Henry) all suffered through stories that seemed unbelievable and false, and each time their stories moved to stage center, my heart sank. Henry in particular presented Eric with such an untenable choice of a relationship that was so obviously going to be a disaster, that it was agony trudging all the way through Part II  waiting for Eric to finally correct his mistake. The actors playing these guys were of course committed and gave it their all (though I'm sorry to say I was never convinced on the Adam/Leo performance), but the characters seemed more like plot devices than real people.

Did I tear up at the finale of Part I? Well sure, but I teared up at a very similar scene in Longtime Companion 30 years ago, and I'm genuinely surprised no-one connected with the production steered the writer and director to a different solution that wasn't such a ripoff (all right, an homage) to the earlier work.

Then there's the problematic set. I'm usually an enormous fan of Bob Crowley's work. This time I just didn't get it. Why occupy an entire stage with a platform whose one trick was to sink from 18" above the stage to 8" below? If presenting a wading pool was so essential to the show, couldn't they have achieved that with a watery aqua lighting effect? (Oh wait, they actually did.) Worse, poor Stephen Daldry was forced to stage half the scenes walking around the perimeter of the deck to avoid awkward crosses up and down that 18" ledge. And to sit in a theater and watch actors move in front of a black surround for 7 hours was simply too meager a visual palette to support what the creators believed was this Grand Important Drama.

Which brings us to the length. Why oh why did it need 7 hours to tell this story? Frankly I think there is a very beautiful 2-3 hour script buried in this marathon of a play. If the playwright were ever to consider setting the best of this play free, I'd be first in line to see it.

 

Updated On: 1/4/20 at 09:36 PM

[Stephen75]

Posted: 1/3/20 at 10:06pm

Finally saw part 2 -- I hated this. The writing is on the whole so corny, so melodramatic, so clearly striving to be Big and Important, I found it to be so incredibly heavy-handed and, really, bad. There's no stakes, no interesting character arcs, nothing to cling to, just airy monologues and conversations that mention "important topics" but have nothing to say about them. Before I say this, let me say that I do not care about straight actors playing gay roles (although I do completely support gay actors getting gay and straight roles of course and would love to see more representation) I found a lot of the men in this show to be trying really hard to seem gay. Don't get me wrong  - they are great actors, they nail their emotional beats, etc, but sometimes they came across as so queen-y and over the top it almost felt ridiculous and sometimes borderline offensive (I'm pining that on Lopez and Daldry.) 

THAT being said, two wonderful moments emerge from this show, and that is Paul Hilton's wonderful performance and in particular, monologue in Part 1. It was gorgeous, there is a line in there that is something to the effect of "small towns always know how to locate their most effeminate members" (bad paraphrase) that took my breathe away. And the glorious, glorious Lois Smith who devastates in her part. I didn't want her to leave the stage. 

[quizking101]

Posted: 1/4/20 at 10:10am

How is the stage door on two show days? Going with friends today and they are wondering if they should wait after Part II

[n2nbaby]

Posted: 1/4/20 at 10:44am

quizking101 said: "How is the stage door on two show days? Going with friends today and they are wondering if they should wait after Part II"

When I went in November, after Part I the cast was already walking out the stage door but nobody was waiting and the barricades were not set up. After Part 2, just about everyone came out and signed.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/4/20 at 11:02am

I went to the stage door with a friend after a two show day on Thursday and everyone came out fairly quickly and was incredibly gracious with their time, considering how exhausted they must have been.
And just so you know, Lois Smith does not sign anything.

[persephone88]

Posted: 1/4/20 at 11:16am

Saw this the weekend before New Years. I do agree that the play could stand for some major trimming, but there are some wonderful and moving moments in there, and some lovely performances. Loved Kyle Soller, who did a great job, and I really liked John Benjamin Hickey, though I wish we would have seen more of him in Part 1. I thought Sam Levine's performance was mixed, stronger in Part 2 than in Part 1, and felt that while his part(s) were the most difficult, Andrew Burnap really had the plum part and has a great chance of a Tony nod. I feel like this is play has strong material that needs a good editor, and would love to see it whittled down a bit more to its strengths. We laughed, we cried, we were glad we saw this, despite some of its flaws, and it will be interesting to see how future productions change this up...

[schubox]

Posted: 1/4/20 at 10:27pm

Saw both parts of this today. Not sure I can add anything that hasn’t already been said here, but I found it uneven. Some incredibly high highs, and some low lows. Lois Smith’s monologue in the last act was incredibly moving for me

[Owen22]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 2:32am

https://tinyurl.com/wb3xdor

Updated On: 1/5/20 at 02:32 AM

[clever2]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 9:59am

Owen22 said: "https://tinyurl.com/wb3xdor"

omg hahaha

[theatregoer3]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 11:00am

This weekend I went back to see the show again, this time bringing my husband along. We’re both 36 and live in Manhattan. I found the play to be a very strong reflection of our lives and the lives of our friends. I wanted my husband to see it and I wondered if he would feel the same.

He ended up loving the show much in the same way I did. He agreed that he had never seen a play that was such a close reflection of our lives and the lives of our friends - political and cultural debates about what it means to be gay, arguments with gays who are moving towards conservatism (or worse...Pete Buttigeig!), the vapidness of Fire Island culture, MDMA!, the meth problem that’s always right around the corner, white privilege, three way relationships, suddenly having money, still not having any money, questioning whether or not to stay in NYC, and on and on.

We loved it and we’re planning on going back with our friends.

[cfbrrr]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 2:50pm

My first post. Some comments on “The Inheritance.”

1) A possible derivation of the requiemesque ending of Part 1, the most oft-cited portion in the play, can be detected at the very end of the musical “March of the Falsettos/“Falsettoland,” as produced at the Hartford Stage Co. in 1992 — a production that, revised, went to Broadway to become the sandwiched-together “Falsettos” we know today.

At show’s end, after the character Whizzer dies of AIDS (though the disease-name, not yet known in the early-‘80s-setting of the show, is unspoken), a huge, full-stage version of the AIDS quilt is lowered, with specific mention of many victims. The emotional reaction of the audience was very similar to the audible sobbings heard at the Part 1 culmination of “Inheritance.” (When it moved to Broadway, with a different director, the “Falsettos” production became quiltless.)

Additionally, “The Inheritance” was originally commissioned by the Hartford Stage Co. Coincidence?

2) I’ve seen all three productions of “Inheritance” — at the Young Vic, at the West End’s Noel Coward Theatre, and on Broadway — and the Young Vic mounting has, I think, been the most effective, for the principal reason that the venue itself — a spare, modernist-style theater with, paradoxically, a wider, more expansive stage area than at the Noel Coward — gave the play an immediately contemporary feel, with breathing-space that made the crustily ornate Coward Theater, where you might expect the likes of a 19th-century melodrama to be staged, seem stultified in comparison. In particular, the Part 1 ending was visually and psychologically more powerful — and more sobby! — at the Young Vic, where the auditorium almost became part of the set. Similarly, the Barrymore Theater, with its elaborate rose-gold-colored decor, to me mismatches the aesthetics of the play. It seems that the play’s design was specifically geared toward the Young Vic and just kinda shoehorned into the other two venues.

3) The poster/logo for the play has gotten progressively worse for each of the three productions — not entirely a consequential matter, I don’t think, but not entirely a trivial one either.

4) I saw Mr. Hickey’s final current performances at the Barrymore yesterday, and while I thought that, at both of the London venues, he had basically phoned it in, I also think that he’s done a fine turnaround here in NYC, buoyed, of course, by the truly formidable cast and Daldry’s amazingly skilled direction. That said, the three actor-standouts for me, throughout all three productions, have been Kyle Soller, Andrew Burnap, and Paul Hilton — an almost unbelievably virtuosic trio.

(I have a number of thoughts about the play itself, but that’s enough for now.)

[clever2]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 3:02pm

cfbrrr said: "(I have a number of thoughts about the play itself, but that’s enough for now.) "

Eagerly awaiting more. 

[SisterGeorge]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 3:51pm

Saturday was my second marathon (last was 14 months ago). Loved it all over again. I think the comedy lands even better now (maybe there's a higher recognition factor in NY than in London). In fact, I had forgotten what a central role the city (and the myth) of New York plays throughout the saga. And there are three -- perhaps four  -- scenes that remain some of the most devastating in all contemporary drama.

It's true Part II does meander a bit (I found Toby's Fire Island escapade  and his childhood revelations a bit tiresome), but I walked out after the final curtain feeling, once again, that I had just seen an extraordinary theatrical event.

I do recommend that anyone seeing it for the first time read Howards End first just for the thrill of discovering how brilliantly Lopez has adapted many of the novel's characters and plot events.

The actors, regardless of their sexual orientation, are a remarkable ensemble. Could openly gay actors have been as good? Probably. Better? Unlikely.

To mark his final performance, JBH received a lovely bouquet of flowers at the curtain call, and he gently kissed Lois Smith on top of her head just before they walked off.

 

 

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/5/20 at 4:51pm

Thanks for that. I asked Hickey if he was definitely coming back to the show and he said it was the plan, if it was still playing. I really hope it is.

[LightsOut90]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 12:10am

Anyone thats seen this should try and see One In Two at The New Group before it closes this coming sunday 1/12, ended up seeing that and The Inheritence this weekend and by did the later inform the former in so many ways

[Miles2Go2]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 1:15am

Okay, I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet after my dissertation yesterday on my two-show Saturday. I changed rooms to a nicer room which I just saw tonight when I got back to hotel so still need to unpack and prep for work tomorrow (Monday).

I saw both parts of The Inheritance today (Sunday). In three words: I Loved It. It was cathartic, powerful and beautiful. Is it messy and flawed? Sometimes, but the strengths greatly outweighed whatever flaws it may have.

My least favorite parts were probably (especially in Part One) when all the friends were on stage at the same time. Those scenes could seem inauthentic and preachy. But it allows us to begin to know the characters. And I know there are similar dinner table scenes in Howard’s End.

I loved the performances of the entire cast but especially Kyle Soller, Andrew Burnap, and Samuel H. Levine. And of course Lois Smith is a treasure. Today was Tony Goldwyn’s first day performing in the show. He was pretty reserved (I now see it as a reasonable character choice) in Part One so I wasn’t sure what to think. But in Part 2, he opened up and was openly crying at the end. I ended up loving his portrayal. Compared to the Henry Wilcox in both the film and mini-series version of Howard’s End, this was the only time I didn’t feel like Henry was a douchebag at the end. That’s not to say he didn’t have his a-hole moments, but as compared to Howard’s End, I got a fuller picture of his interior life. It also helped that he got some consequences to his behavior in Part two of the play.

Speaking of comparing The Inheritance to Howard’s End, I’m glad I had watched the movie/mini-series. I was able to make some linkages. I know there has been some criticism of the play on focusing largely on white gay men who either are well-off or travel in those circles. That’s no doubt true, but I found universal truths and experiences represented. Also, that’s also true to Howard’s End. However, in Howard’s End (the movie/mini-series anyway; I haven’t read the novel), I got very little sense of the interior life or motivations of the characters. I did not have that problem with The Inheritance. Also, while not the central characters, The Inheritance had more people of color than Howard’s End.

As I mentioned earlier, I found this very cathartic. Even if I didn’t like everything in the each of the Acts, I thought each Act ended strongly. I cried a lot. In fact, at the end of Part Two after curtain call, lady to my left was still crying as was I so we spontaneously hugged for awhile which of course made me cry harder. Lol. She told me to take care of herself and I wished her the same.

I know some have faulted the ending of Part One for borrowing liberally from the ending of Longtime Companion (one of my favorite movies). I get that, but the set-up and context was different enough that it didn’t bother me.

Regarding, stagedoor everyone came out. Lois Smith came out of the stagedoor escorted by two other actors who got her across the street presumably to her ride. So she didn’t sign, but everyone else did.

Okay, work day today (Monday) followed by West Side Story.

[Miles2Go2]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 1:37am

I can’t believe I forgot Paul Hilton. His Morgan/Walter were among my favorite moments of Part One. 

Oh and I bought the windowcard (which I got signed), the tumbler set, and the coffee mug. They’ve sold out of the magnet. 

Updated On: 1/6/20 at 01:37 AM

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 10:23am

Has anyone done rush for the show lately? I’m curious where where the seats have been.

[IdinaBellFoster]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 10:52am

Has anyone bought tickets at TKTS day of? Are you able to buy both parts at once? I'm planning on seeing it this Saturday but have held off purchasing due to prices.

[ren598]

Posted: 1/6/20 at 11:22am

quizking101 said: "How is the stage door on two show days? Going with friends today and they are wondering if they should wait after Part II"

I’ve seen the show 3 times now on two show days and each and every time the entire cast have been very generous with their time signing and taking photos.  I like that the crowds aren’t crazy large like at some other shows so you do get a chance to get an autograph from everyone in the cast (minus Lois Smith) if you want.