The Brazilian axiom of the necessity to “slay a lion a day “to survive definitely refers to this magnificent achievement of importing and staging locally what the London Daily Telegraph has called “the most important American play of this century”: ‘the Inheiritance’ by Puerto Rican- American Matthew Lopez,41.
The play´s Brazilian rights were obtained by Bruno, the son of popular Brazilian Novela (soap opera) actor Antonio Fagundes, who fell in love and ‘became obsessed with it” 2019 on Broadway. ( I am now informed that director Ze Henrique owns the Braziliian rights.)
It has won four Tony awards (Broadway´s Oscars) and places Lopez in the footsteps of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O´Neill.
“The turbulent relation between the (gay) couple is way to speak of humanity, love, affection, desire, passion and saudade (Brazilian for missing someone or something). And when five men of different generations get to know each other, the trauma begins, “says Fagundes.
“I am not the star of the play and am not doing it to make money,” top Brazilian actor Reynaldo Gianechhini told the O Globo newspaper adding ‘In the background is the gay community which we have to view more openly. Although it takes place in the United States it has a parallel very much to do with Brazil’
Inspired by the 1910 novel “Howard´s End” by Britain´s legendary and gay author “E.M. Forster (1879-1970) to the two-part seven hour plus play premiered 2018 in London before transferring to Broadway in 2019 until March 2020.
Budgets for Brazilian (and especially Carioca) theatrical productions are midgets in comparison with budgets of Broadway and London´s West End and the the fact that such a large underpaid and over-worked cast is staging the production locally is a Herculean task four nights a week is due to insistence of yet another Brazilian dreamer who has realized his dream!
If you are a theater lover and didn’t see this epic abroad, please go see the Brazilian production. But patience…. it has two intermissions and runs two nights.
(Am looking forward to seeing the second part!)
And it might help to read it beforehand (or afterwards as I did via the magic of the Amazon Kindle) in order to fully enjoy, endure and survive an unforgettable evening at the theater.
For in contrast to the more subtle theater we old-timers knew with hidden allusions, this long theatrical journey into the gay men´s world on a complex, neuroses ridden island called Manhattan is full of love affairs and breakups complete with onstage kisses, cries and screams.
That this contriversial discussion of gay life has reached Brazil´s theaters is proof that the curtain may have come down on the vulgar, insensitive epoch of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro, who once declared “I prefer my son dead in an accident to a son who is gay.”
Or has this epoch in a once (?) chauvinistic Brazil really ended?
The play in some ways is reminiscent of Pirandello´s “Six Characters in Search of an Author” because from start to beginning of the first act it revolves around trying to write, perform, direct a play –which eventually becomes a “hit.”
But of course, there is more to it than how to succeed at writing a play about the difficult saga of being homosexual in our times.
And only the setting is Manhattan and rendezvous places like at a Juilliard String quartet concert or at a bookshop, the rendezvous could just as easily be at Rio´s Municipal Theater, Sala Cecilia Meireles or a local book launching.
The play is inspired by British author E. Morgan (a character in Heritage) Forster whose posthumous novel “Maurice” (1913, published in 1971) was a pioneer effort to describe a gay love affair.
But we must also remember that Ireland´s esteemed author Oscar Wilde was imprisoned from 1895 to 1897 for allegedly “indecent acts with men”.
Times have indeed changed!
The motley crew of characters onstage will be recognized by anyone who has lived close to the artistic scene in not only in New York, London but even Rio and Sao Paulo and their trials, sorrows, deaths from AIDS and difficulties with conservative families.
The major criticism of Lopez long epic is that the young author-director-screenplay writer is too wordy and literary rather than action minded.
Yet never mind as reported above “The Inheiritance” is not only an important play but a literary landmark.