Acclaimed London two-part play The Inheritance received an A-list welcome — and a double standing ovation — as it made its debut on Broadway.
The cast brought the audience to its feet at the end of each part at Manhattan’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre yesterday. The production, inspired by EM Forster’s Howards End and directed by Stephen Daldry, earned five-star reviews and the Evening Standard Theatre Award for best play when it first ran at the Young Vic before transferring to the Noel Coward Theatre last year.
At the New York première stars including Uma Thurman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Glenn Close joined the marathon sitting which started at 12.30pm and ended just before 10pm.
The play tells the story of the lives of a group of gay men in New York against the backdrop of the legacy of the AIDS crisis.
Playwright Matthew Lopez, 42, said: “When I started daydreaming about this play I never could have imagined the places it would take me. I never imagined it would take me here.”
After its West End success, Lopez said he was “dying” for a Broadway transfer, but also hopes to take the play back to London.
He said: “I want to go back to London and do it again there. We had the best time. We always knew that this was a New York play and it needed to come home.”
He has already started working on his next project — a new adaptation of the 1959 film Some Like it Hot.
London-based American actor Kyle Soller, who plays Eric Glass, said: “There will always be a special place in my heart in the fact that we opened it in London and created it there ... But then to be working on it for two years and it finally landing here is just amazing."
The Inheritance at the Noel Coward Theatre - in pictures
