Lopez thought, why not use Howards End as a starting point for a play that looks at gay life in the early 21st century and have Forster's spirit help guide a group of young men to tell their own stories? 'And 'the vibrations' were a closeted gay man in the early 20th century, at that time, speaking to a closeted gay boy at the end of the 20th century.' 'The thing that drew me to Forster most specifically, I think, looking back on it, was I was picking up on what I would call 'the vibrations,' ' says Lopez. The legacy Forster passed on to Lopez was personal. Now, Lopez has turned that inspiration into a play that looks at different generations of gay men, and the legacy they pass on to one another. And there wasn't anything that really should have spoken to me about the film - and yet everything did.' 'And I'm watching this story about a group of Edwardian Brits haggling over real estate and inheritances. 'I was this 16-year-old Puerto Rican kid in the panhandle of Florida,' Lopez recalls. Forster's novel is: 'One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister.'Īnd the story of The Inheritance may as well begin with playwright Matthew Lopez's introduction to Howards End - when his mother took him to see the 1992 film adaptation.

One of the most anticipated Broadway plays of the season is a two-part, seven-hour epic, called The Inheritance, inspired by E.M. Levine, left, Kyle Soller and Andrew Burnap.

Forster's Howards End, Matthew Lopez wrote The Inheritance, which explores different generations of gay men, and the legacy they pass on to one another.

Howard's end em forster