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How do you recommendThe Inheritance?
Its immense, so offering it to someone feels like asking them to help you carry something heavy.
This isnt an evenings entertainment: Itll eat a week of your life.
And while its got sublime sections, under all that weight, it wobbles.
Taste and the transmission of taste links Lopezs characters.
The company gradually assembles on it: all handsome men, all barefoot, and all writing.
Its a homosocial utopia but its clear that the blank page is also frightening.
But how does he begin?
He opens his favorite novel, hoping to find inspiration in its first familiar sentence.
The novel isHowards End, so E.M. Forster himself (Paul Hilton) ambles out, apologetic but affirming.
The Young Mans tale begins under his guidance.
At first, its the story of a present-day couple.
Lopezs biggest laughs come from the rooms total outrage about this rent-controlled, two-bathroom wonderland.
(He is chastised, rather cruelly, for being closeted during his lifetime.)
Male sensuality is everywhere inThe Inheritance, but the most erotic language is reserved for real estate.
At this point, Lopez is in grand form.
What seemed monumental in the first half seems merely … binge-watchable.
Theres a scene inHowards Endthat has haunted me for twenty years.
How do you quiet yourself to experience art?
It also contains an image so strong that it wrenches the door closed behind it.
At the close of Part One, Lopez sends Eric a haunting.
Suffice it to say that Eric, our avatar, finally senses the generation killed by AIDS.
Its such a powerful moment that it makes the second part almost impossible.
Our souls had been wracked; why were we now watching a soap opera?
All through Part Two, I tried to be a Margaret, but I just couldnt do it.
Lopez had gone too slack, and my memories of the first half began to populate the stage again.
I started to picture lost men, walking across a lightning-lit landscape.
I could almost see them, even though they havent been with us for 30 years and more.
The Inheritanceis at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
