The Inheritance writer Matthew López and director Jack Sain on their new play, Reverberation

Jack Sain: You wrote this play a decade ago while living in New York, way before The Inheritance. You’ve since updated it to reflect your move to London: what brought about this change? 

Matthew López: I think ultimately this is the one play of mine that is more specific to the characters and less specific to the place. I wanted to ensure that a British audience received this story with as few barriers between them and the characters as possible. The Inheritance would never work set in London, but this play felt like it would actually benefit from translating the action to roughly where it’s being received. 

JS: One of the reasons the programming team got so excited about Reverberation was that they felt that the way it explores isolation was deeply universal in a post-Covid world. In the play, Jonathan exhibits some agoraphobic tendencies; you’ve leaned into this in the rewrites. For reasons explained in the play, his flat becomes his cage and his sanctuary, his prison and his palace. Did this new reality inform your approach when you sat back down with the play and reshaped it?

ML: Weirdly no. There was just this experience we all had. I think if there’s anything as a result of Covid, it’s that we all have now experienced a version of what Jonathan, and to an extent as well Claire, are experiencing. Which is to say, a feeling of isolation, but also a feeling that home is safe, and the world is dangerous. So I think if there’s anything, there’s hope that audiences will – even more than they did when it premiered pre-Covid – understand these characters. Again, another dismantling of the potential barrier between the audience and the characters. I don’t think there was anything we did to point to Covid – I think there’s one reference to lockdown and that’s it. This isn’t a Covid play, this is a play about loneliness and isolation. 

JS: The Inheritance is deeply specific, rooted in a time and a place. You’ve spoken before about how much of this play lives in the scenes between the scenes: essentially, you leave quite a lot up to the individual production. Unlike The Inheritance, which clocked in at nearly seven hours, this piece is elliptical, even elusive at times: what brought you to writing about characters who struggle to express themselves?

ML: I think that’s where I was in my life at the time. I wrote this several years before The Inheritance, and it reflects a struggle I had in that moment to connect to other people, to connect to myself. I think that these are people that have a lot of trouble even being honest with themselves about where they are in their lives, in their emotional lives and in their physical lives. The point of these characters is that they’re very open ended: they’re not as robustly filled in as other characters that I’ve written. As a result, I hope that that lends itself to a myriad of interpretations. That these end up seeming like endlessly playable characters, not just from cast to cast, but from night to night. 

JS: Some people feel like we’re inundated with narratives that centre queer trauma, yet statistics show that homophobic crime is on the rise. Why is it important to tell these kinds of stories through art? 

ML: Until they stop happening, we need to still be writing about them. I love queer joy. I’ve written queer joy, I made a whole movie that was predicated on the notion of queer joy. But to ignore queer trauma is to bury your head in the sand from what the world is actually like. I think that the shocking thing about when I started to share this play to theatres in the United States… The most common response was that “this isn’t really happening any more, and why are we talking about it”. And I remember actually forwarding articles about this incident, that incident, to different people at different theatres who had passed on the play because “this doesn’t happen.” It has never gone away. The only thing that’s gone away is our attention on it. I think we have to keep focusing our attention on it, no matter how much we prefer to deal with queer joy. Jack, can you speak of the three cast members, and briefly why you cast each of them? What makes them so unique and right for their roles?

JS: I think the best shot you have at three dimensionality when it comes to casting is to take an original approach, to think laterally. Eleanor Tomlinson is making her stage debut, and given all her screen experience, she’s used to flicking from sitcom beats to wrought emotion in seconds, it’s fascinating to watch her enormous talent at work. Michael Ahomka-Lindsay we knew from his work onstage – he’s in Cabaret while rehearsing this play, and he’s actually returning to the Bristol Old Vic having been in Nancy Medina’s production of Choir Boy last year. He’s one of the most profound performers I’ve ever encountered. Jack Gibson was actually the first one Wes we met in person – he graduated quite recently, and is an incredible discovery. He’s startling and hilarious, and brings an infectious joy into the room. Couldn’t be more lucky really. 

ML: What excites you most about working on this production and what terrifies you most? 

JS: Actually getting down to it! We workshopped it a year ago, so it feels like a long time in the making: Bristol wrapped us up in their arms and we have felt tightly held throughout. If there’s any terror, it’s mainly just about delving into the play’s very intense psychological realms. Finding the right language to approach difficult subject matters is also a challenge: the play confronts as much as it comforts. Exploring how to do that safely is necessary from scratch with every new show, but perhaps even more so here. But again, we are being supported by brilliant professionals in every corner. I’ve never had such an electric first day: admittedly we’re only a few days in, but it feels like something really special is happening. You can’t predict this kind of chemistry. I’ve also had the opportunity to bring on board creatives that I’ve been a fan of for a long time, and seeing them work at close quarters is thrilling. 

ML: Why did you want to do this play? 

JS: I had a visceral response to it. I love these characters, I see them as ships bumping in the night. Some of the themes are deeply universal, some are more specific: I related to it on a very personal level. Like you say, it’s an important story. More broadly, I’m drawn to queer stories, to lyrical pieces. Essentially, plays by Matthew López. The rich tapestry of The Inheritance had a profound effect on London, and I was eager to read your other work. Our first meeting about Reverberation showed me that we saw it in the same light: we see these characters in an incredibly potent chapter of their journey. This play reaffirms that it is darkest just before the dawn. 

Reverberation runs at Bristol Old Vic from 2 Oct – 2 Nov. www.bristololdvic.org.uk.