10 Broadway Players to Watch

Matthew Lopez (Playwright) has been a talent to watch ever since his 2011 play “The Whipping Man” became one of the most widely produced new American plays of the past decade. After regional and Off Broadway success with works including “The Legend of Georgia McBride,” Lopez is now making his Rialto debut with his epic two-parter “The Inheritance,” arriving in New York after a critically lauded run in London that won the playwright an Olivier Award for best new play.

The Gotham premiere represents a homecoming for the show, not only because Lopez (who’s also written for HBO’s “The Newsroom”) is based in New York, but because of its subject matter. Thematically inspired by “Howards End,” “The Inheritance” is a portrait of the city’s contemporary gay life, still shadowed by the losses of the AIDS epidemic — an era he didn’t experience first-hand, but feels a personal connection to.

“I come from a New York City family, but I wasn’t raised in New York,” he says. “We would get reports from my aunt [Broadway fave Priscilla Lopez] who lost so many friends in the years of epidemic. The impression I got as a 10-year-old was that the city was on fire. It was my first association with what it meant to be gay.”

He’s looking forward to seeing the play back on its home turf with his fellow Olivier winners, director Stephen Daldry and actor Kyle Soller, in tow. “It’s an American play. We don’t have to explain the rhythms the people here.”