Photo by Morgan Sophia Photography
By Bill Hirschman
Suffused throughout the epic length, depth and breadth of the masterpiece The Inheritance Part 1 gifted here by Zoetic Stage is a profound sense of searching.
All the varied personalities in this array of gay characters are yearning to know who they are and what their responsibility is to further the integration of homosexuals into society as a whole.
With fierce anger, incisive wit, inestimable growth and eroding loss, Zoetic’s entire creative company takes Matthew López’s brilliant award-winning text and elevates, expands and injects lifeforce into the procession of letters and syllables.
One difficulty reviewing this production running through Jan. 25 is adequately reporting the specificity of the themes and issues, which often reinforce, buttress and decimate each other depending on who is center stage at the Arsht Center.
Among those issues are the difference and sometime coexistence of sex and love, plus the variety of life experiences as a homosexual in the 21st Century. We could go on and on. And, we think, the meaning of the title is the challenge for societal changes that previous generations shied and secreted from.
The evening is a long journey – three hours and 20 minutes with two intermissions. But it is masterfully paced by director Stuart Meltzer – sometimes pensive and other times barreling like an express train racing past a station.
The premise set in New York City just after the height of the AIDS crisis traces the intersecting lives of Adam (Aidan Paul), an aspiring actor, Toby (Anthony Michael Martinez), a novelist turned playwright, and Eric (Alex Weisman), a community activist who is the hub of the turning wheel.
Adam is creating a backstory based on his life to date, imaging, even inventing it piece by piece as we watch. He does this with the constant advice of his 10 friends who also act out the story and insert their own ideas and commentary as a kind of chorus.
Crucial, though, is the guidance, advice and occasional acting by “Morgan” (Michael McKeever). He is the dead novelist E.M. Forster whose landmark novel Howard’s End has inspired Adam and provides an echoing bedrock for López. Indeed, what becomes clear is that Forster’s refusal to publicly acknowledge his sexuality in his lifetime is the inheritance these characters are being challenged to supersede.
Several scenes stop the plot for the cast lounging across the stage to dive into impassioned machine-gun rapid debates on the issues. Sometimes the ideas and arguments flash past too fast to absorb – similar to some of Tom Stoppard’s dialogue. But that may very well be the point, to show the diversity of opinion. You can almost hear López lecturing us directly even though the people batting around the ideas and claims and statements and insights.
And there are many scenes of people trying to sort out relationships, feeling their way around in the dark. Emotions rise and fall like the tide.
A proud forthrightness dominates any dealing with sex. López and Meltzer make a definite choice with explicit language, copious humor and a brief bit of nudity.
And then there’s that one scene: Adam and Toby have a graphic sexual congress that you have not seen the like of at the Arsht (fully clothed) and choreographed by intimacy director Matthew Buffalo. Amid the frank sexual coupling, López intentionally questions the sense of romance by having them debate what Chinese food to order later.
That underscores López’s theme that sometimes sex and love and feeling intertwine, sometimes they have nothing to do with each other. Throughout the play, there is a kaleidoscope interaction and swirling of sex that some hope will enhance their sense of self-worth.
But we have waited too long to cite the most inescapable, unforgettable scene. Morgan is playing the part in Adam’s story of a friend likely in his 60s. He is telling his life to Eric in a quiet moment in his apartment.
McKeever and Meltzer deliver one of the most moving passages in this or many other seasons: It is an uninterrupted 12-minute monologue plunging us deeply into the emotional experience of being inside the AIDS crisis to the point of being almost visceral.
But then he slowly walks us, his hand in our hand, through the emerging of homosexuals as a community in the post-Stonewall aftermath. But it crests with his recreation of his excruciating commitment to housing and ministering to fatally ill AIDS victims.
We have been watching McKeever performances (and his plays) for three decades and he has gifted us with fine, incisive work but we’ll happily argue that his work here may be the best we’ve savored in that whole time.
Michael McKeever and Alex Weisman
Meltzer’s work should be a textbook lesson. He embraces the need for highly theatrical staging; this isn’t and should never be a film. He has molded this multi-faced complex effort involving a two dozen actors and artists into cohesive whole. He drives the forward movement in kinetic circular movement that can seem like a bunch of pinballs flying about -– a significant necessity given the length of the play. But his work in the one-on-one scenes is equally deft in exposing the intricate and intense guts of the moments.
The 12-member cast, some playing multiple roles, is solidly melded into an ensemble that smoothly handles the interweaving dialogue and who create reasonably distinct personalities. While they never seem as if they are standing outside the production, sometimes you sense a joy from a cast being able to tell their story. A couple of the younger actors do need to work more on their enunciation.
But praise is specially due to all three lead actors who inject passion and unvarnished truth in every moment. Watch Weisman as his composed face morphs as Eric realizes his life is changing. Martinez excavates Toby’s deeply troubled downward spiral. Paul exudes the poetic creative soul inside Adam. They all are portraying characters in Adam’s evolving story from the inside, but there is a sense that they, like us, are observing and processing the proceedings as well.
The rest of the cast includes Tom Wahl as Henry, a classic middle-aged Wall Street businessman who becomes more comfortable by millimeters in bonding with Eric. Plus credit the assemblage Alberto Blanco, Angel Dominguez, Imran Hylton, Sam Lantz, Caio Ferreira, Randall Swinton and Larry Toyter. Weisman is a Chicago-based actor who grew up in Broward County and who earned a Carbonell nomination in playwright McKeever’s American Rhapsody at Zoetic Stage in 2023.
The production team delivers their own tour de force, among them resident stage manager Vanessa Santiagio, assistant director and sound designer Bailey Hacker, costume designer Dario Almirón.
Traditionally, the set is minimal (Broadway’s primarily was just a platform), but designer Michael McClain once again pulls off a triumph. On the thrust stage, he creates a U-shape of marble steps and platforms in beige and dark green, all flecked with white stripes. It creates the sense of a formal presentation in an ancient arena that rejects time. For two acts, it is backed by a huge drop depicting what may or may not be a Roman bathhouse, designed by Natasha Lopes Hernandez, the props/visual artist.
Credit lighting designer Becky Montero for creating and charting a constellation of moods. Some intentionally focus on a specific character’s aria, others subtly alter the aura without the audience’s notice.
History: The Inheritance itself was inspired by the 1910 novel Howard’s End. It premiered in London in 2018 in two parts, each more than three hours long, and then opened on Broadway in November 2019. The hope was that people could see both parts in one day, but many people split them up over two visits. It won four Tony Awards including Best Play and Best Director. No one has convincingly answered why all the actors but Morgan and Henry are barefoot in most productions.
Part 2 is not formally slated here for a coming season, but don’t be surprised if you get to follow these characters next year as they dive deeper into the complexities of their lives and society.
The Inheritance Part 1 is storytelling incarnate – vivid, ambitious and magnetic.
For some in the audience, it is a reflection of their lives past and present, but it’s not just a theatrical documentary for everyone else. The quest for self-knowledge and all society’s responsibility to pursue change is universal.
Cheers to this: It is clearly posted that if anyone’s phone rings or they are caught using it during the production, the show will stop cold. That, I’m anxious to see.
The Inheritance Part 1from Zoetic Stage (co-produced by the Adrienne Arsht Center) runs through Jan. 25 at the Arsht’s Carnival Studio Theater, 1300 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami. Running time 210 minutes. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Tickets $66.69 – $72.54 includes all fees. Patrons under 18 will not be admitted. https://www.arshtcenter.org/tickets/2025-2026/theater-up-close/the-inheritance-part-1/
Anthony Michael Martinez, Michael McKeever, Sam Lantz, Alex-Weisman.
