The Inheritance is a play written by Matthew López. It was inspired by the 1910 novel Howards End by E. M. Forster. The play first performed in London at the Young Vic theater in March 2018. It later moved to Broadway in November 2019.
Productions
The play The Inheritance was commissioned by Hartford Stage in Hartford, Connecticut. It was first produced in London at the Young Vic Theatre in March 2018, directed by Stephen Daldry. The play was staged in two parts, each over three hours long, and was meant to be viewed one after the other. It reimagines E. M. Forster’s Howards End as a story about New York’s gay community, with gay men from different generations representing Forster’s characters from different social classes. Lopez noticed similarities between his own life and Forster’s experience of being closeted before homosexuality was partially decriminalized. He told The New Yorker, “When I read his diaries, that’s me. That’s me, a hundred years ago, as a closeted white man in England.” Lopez said that Gatz, an 8-hour adaptation of The Great Gatsby by Elevator Repair Service, had the greatest influence on his work, inspiring his use of “self-narration.”
The Inheritance explores love between gay men in modern New York, a generation after the early AIDS crisis. It asks what the current generation owes to those who came before. Rebecca Read of The New Yorker wrote that the main character, Eric Glass, who is the grandson of Holocaust survivors, has a personal connection to history and is better able to understand the struggles of the gay community.
The production moved to the Noël Coward Theatre in London’s West End on September 21, 2018, and was produced by Tom Kirdahy, Sonia Friedman, and Hunter Arnold.
The Inheritance won Best Play at the London Evening Standard Theatre Awards in 2018. It also won Best New Play, Best Director (Stephen Daldry), and Best Actor (Kyle Soller) at both the 2019 Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards and the 2019 Laurence Olivier Awards. It also received an Olivier Award for Best Lighting (Jon Clark).
The play premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on September 27, 2019, with previews starting and an official opening on November 17. Lois Smith played the role of Margaret, and Kyle Soller and John Benjamin Hickey repeated their roles from the London production.
In December 2019, it was announced that Tony Goldwyn would take over Hickey’s role for four months starting in January 2020, while Hickey directed a revival of Plaza Suite. However, the play closed on March 15, 2020, after 46 previews and 138 regular performances. The final four shows were canceled on March 12, 2020, when all Broadway theaters closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A German-language version of The Inheritance, titled Das Vermächtnis, directed by Philip Stölzl, premiered in Munich on January 30, 2022. It was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen as one of ten notable productions in 2022. Das Vermächtnis also premiered in Hanover on April 22, 2022, and later in Münster on December 3, 2022, and in Bamberg on October 6, 2023. Part one of the Bamberg production was invited to the Bayerische Theatertage in 2024.
In 2022, The Inheritance had its first major regional production in the United States at the SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston, running from April 22 to June 11. The production was directed by Paul Daigneault and featured scenic design by Cristina Todesco, costume design by Charles Schoonmaker, and lighting design by Karen Perlow. A review in The Boston Globe called it an ambitious and emotionally powerful staging that focused on memory, community, and the lasting effects of the AIDS crisis. The production received eight Elliot Norton Award nominations and won three awards: Outstanding Play – Midsize Theater, Outstanding Featured Performance – Midsize Theater (Mishka Yarovoy), and Outstanding Ensemble.
A West Coast premiere directed by Mike Donahue opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles on September 13, 2022, and ran until November 27, 2022. Los Angeles Times critic Charles McNulty said the production was “better in Los Angeles than on Broadway.” An audio version was released by Audible Theater in March 2023.
A Swedish version of The Inheritance, called ARV, premiered at The Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm on November 5, 2022. It was part of the theatre biennale 2023 and won the Nöjesguiden award for best performance in 2023. It was also nominated for a QX-award for best production in 2023. ARV was staged again in 2024–2025 in a new version at The Royal Dramatic Theatre and directed by Carl Johan Karlson.
A Brazilian Portuguese version, A Herança, premiered in São Paulo at Teatro Vivo on March 9, 2023, and ran until April 30, 2023. The play was translated and directed by Zé Henrique de Paula, who also produced it. Bruno Fagundes played the role of Eric Glass in the Brazilian version. A new season of A Herança opened at Teatro Raul Cortez in São Paulo on June 1, 2023, and ran until July 30, 2023.
A Danish version, Arven, premiered at the Royal Danish Playhouse on March 25, 2023, and ran until May 13, 2023. Directed by Thomas Bendixen, the production won the 2023 Reumert Award for Best Performance. It opened again in August 2024 as part of the Royal Danish Theatre’s 2024–25 season and is scheduled to open again in August 2026 as part of its 2026–2027 season.
In April 2023, Canadian Stage announced a production of The Inheritance in Toronto as part of its 2023–24 season. Directed by Brendan Healy, the production ran at the Bluma Appel Theatre in March and April 2024.
In January 2024, The Inheritance had its Australian premiere at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs in a production directed by Kitan Petkovski.
A Norwegian version, Arven, ran at Nationaltheatret in Oslo from February 8 to May 31, 2025.
A Catalan-language version, L’herència, was staged at Teatre Lliure in Barcelona from February 20 to March 16, 2025, and directed by Josep Maria Mestres
Critical response
A reviewer from The Daily Telegraph described the play as “perhaps the most important American play of this century so far.”
A Variety reviewer stated the play is a “complex but impressive work that explores issues related to LGBTQ+ communities and economic systems. It examines how gay men today owe their past generations and questions whether the past may have influenced the present in unexpected ways.”
Michael Billington, a reviewer for The Guardian, wrote that the play has a literary structure but is filled with lively events and stories. He noted that the playwright, Lopez, often pauses the story to have characters engage in passionate discussions, including one about how gay culture, after fighting against discrimination, now risks being used for purposes it did not intend. In a later article, Billington also praised Paul Hilton’s performance in the Young Vic Theatre production, which was listed by The Guardian as one of the 50 greatest theatre shows since 2000, with The Inheritance ranked 15th.
The show received mostly mixed reviews on Broadway. Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote, “Its wide scope does not always lead to deep insights.” He praised the acting of many cast members and highlighted the continued importance of remembering the AIDS crisis, saying, “The effort to recall a difficult time from the past that many young people today may not know captures what is best about The Inheritance.”
Rebecca Mead, writing in The New Yorker, compared The Inheritance to Angels in America, a two-part play by Tony Kushner that also explored the early AIDS crisis in New York. She described The Inheritance as “less intellectually challenging” and noted it “strikes an upper-middlebrow tone.” She also compared the play to Hanya Yanagihara’s 2015 novel A Little Life, which deals with themes of trauma in the LGBTQ+ community.
Terrence McNally, the author of the 1994 play Love! Valour! Compassion!, which also addressed the AIDS crisis, said that as an 80-year-old survivor and witness to the events covered in the play, he had never felt such a strong emotional response. He described the experience of watching the play about the early AIDS crisis with an audience that included both older gay men who lived through the crisis and younger men who are the characters in the story.