Review Roundup: THE INHERITANCE Opens at the Young Vic

The Young Vic Theatre presents The Inheritance, starring Andrew Burnap, John Benjamin Hickey, Samuel H. Levine, Kyle Soller and Vanessa Redgrave. Joining them is Hugo Bolton, Robert Boulter, Hubert Burton, Syrus Lower, Michael Marcus, Luke Thallon and Michael Walters. Stephen Daldry directs this hilarious and profound heart-breaker - a major world premiere in two parts by New York playwright Matthew Lopez.

You have to wonder why there isn't a word in the English language for the fireworks that go off in your brain when you finally kiss someone you've wanted for years. Or for the intimacy and tenderness you feel as you hold the hand of a suffering friend.

A generation after the worst of the AIDS crisis, what is it like to be a young gay man in New York? How many words are there now for the different kinds of pain, the different kinds of love?

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Michael Billington, The Guardian: While Lopez's play has a literary framework, it teems with life and incident: watching it, as a neighbour remarked, is like bingewatching a box-set. It tells multiple stories. One of the most intriguing shows the success-driven Toby becoming involved with a rent boy, Leo, who is not only a lookalike for Adam but also tests the moral probity of all who encounter him. Lopez is also unafraid to periodically stop the plot and clear the stage for an impassioned debate: one of the most intense is about the status of gay culture which, having fought so long against oppression, now finds itself in danger of being co-opted. It is Eric, however, who cuts through the swirling opinions by urging the need to honour the past while living fully in the present.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: Part One ends with the heart-rending sight of young men in their prime - the ghosts of those who died after contracting Aids - clustering in silent amity around Eric. Part Two holds back Redgrave's achingly frail appearance like a final release yet shows this silver-haired mother, still mourning the gay son she spurned and saw dying ("his voice no more than a croak"), as having found almost none herself. Star ratings are almost beside the point when confronted by work of this magnitude but hell, yeah, five.

Andrzej Lukowski, TimeOut: Comparisons to 'Angels in America' are inevitable and slightly justified: both are two-part, postmodern New York-set epics that deal with the fallout from Aids. But to overcompare 'The Inheritance' to Tony Kushner's magical realist masterwork is a little unfair and not especially helpful. 'The Inheritance' is a cracking story, enjoyably (re)told, and in many ways the metatextual stuff is less there to fuck with our heads, more thrown in for a knowing chuckle. Despite being very long, it's a jolly good watch. And yet Lopez does pull something transcendent out of the bag, a vision of a long, sad tragedy, of an inheritance lost,but also a firm belief that we can learn from what remains.

Simon Button, Gay Times: If all seven hours were just a slog through trauma and tragedy it'd be impossible to sit through, but Lopez has fashioned a kaleidoscopic piece that's witty and bitchy and funny and sad and consciousness-raising and thought-provoking, luxuriating in its length to tell a story about all facets of gay life. It's altogether extraordinary.

Demetrious Matheou, Hollywood Reporter: As enticing as the idea may be of a sister play to Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-Prize-winning landmark, The Inheritance falls well short of the bar. Stephen Daldry's London production for the Young Vic, the two-part play's world premiere, is elegantly staged and well acted by an engaging ensemble. Yet for all its boisterous humor and pathos, the play itself is a terribly unwieldy, ill-disciplined piece of work; this one is epic only in length.

Photo Credit: Simon Annand

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