RICH MEN MISBEHAVING: BROADWAY MORALS, PART 2

ANYONE WHO PLANS TO see “The Inheritance” on Broadway would do well to read “Howards End,” the 1910 novel by E.M. Forster, or at least — although this would horrify one of the play’s characters — see the 1992 Merchant Ivory film. Anyone who plans to see the new Broadway production of “A Christmas Carol,” starring Campbell Scott, probably already knows its whole story, based on Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella.

In the first, a heartless rich man refuses to honor his loved one’s dying wish — to leave a treasured country house to a deserving friend. But the world works in mysterious ways.

In the second, a heartless rich man is transformed after an overnight intervention with three Christmas ghosts.

‘THE INHERITANCE’ IN PHOTOS

AUTHOR, AUTHOR! That’s Matthew Lopez (center, hand over heart), the playwright, surrounded by the cast of “The Inheritance” during the Broadway opening-night curtain call in November. The two-part play (about six and a half hours total), which focuses on a group of gay men in 21st-century New York City, was inspired by the events in Forster’s novel. The London production, which opened in the West End last fall, won four Olivier Awards, including best new play.

OTHER AUTHOR, OTHER AUTHOR! E.M. Forster (Paul Hilton) — or presumably his ghost (Forster died in 1970, at the age of 91) — visits the New Yorkers when one is struggling with the way to tell his story and that of his friends. Kyle Soller, seated left, plays Eric Glass, who lives in a $575-a-month rent-stabilized Manhattan apartment that once belonged to his grandmother. He may be evicted soon. John Benjamin Hickey, seated right, plays Henry Wilcox, who has money and a fabulous house.

BAREFOOT IN THE DARK From left, Samuel H. Levine, Soller and Andrew Burnap. Burnap plays Toby Darling, who falls in love with Eric and moves in with him. Toby’s defining line of dialogue: “Some of us had to work our asses off to become the mediocrities we are.” But that’s before his play becomes a huge success.

THE HOUSE ITSELF Walter Poole (also played by Hilton) has money and power, but he and his lover, Henry Wilcox, are also part of an older generation of gay men who lived through the peak years of the AIDS epidemic. He tries to explain what those times were like, with friends falling dead right and left. They reacted by buying a house in the country and moved there full time — just to get away from all the death. (I had friends who did something similar. They moved to Nashville in 1988. They’re not together anymore, but they’re still there, leading separate lives.) Eventually, Henry became sole owner of the house and let a dying friend stay there in his last days. Then another. And another.

CRIES AND WHISPERS ”The Inheritance” is not exactly a history of gay life in America, but its high-low points include reflections on the disco years, one young character’s fateful night in a Prague bathhouse, the instant diagnostic powers developed in the ‘80s (“He had the look”), Election Night 2016, the advent of Truvada and a description of New York as “a Darwinian experiment writ large.” Stephen Daldry directed both the London and Broadway productions.

INTERCONNECTION Margaret (Lois Smith) doesn’t appear until Part 2 of “The Inheritance.” Her character, shown with Levine, tends a private cemetery in upstate New York, filled with the bodies and spirits of gay men who died of AIDS in the house nearby. (Yes, there are ghosts in this show too.) In the London production, the role was played by Vanessa Redgrave, who in the “Howards End” film played the dying upper-class character with a country house to bequeath.

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‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’ REGIFTED

RICH MAN, POOR MAN. And now we turn to Victorian England, almost 200 years before. Campbell Scott, left, plays Ebenezer Scrooge, a grumpy London moneylender who mistreats pretty much all his fellow human beings, including his underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit (Dashiell Eaves). Cratchit, as anyone familiar with Dickens’s classic story or any of its filmed versions knows, has problems of his own — a housefull of children to feed, including his precious but very ill son, Tiny Tim. Scrooge responds to any expressions of holiday cheer with the expletive “Bah, humbug!”

ACCIDENTAL TSOURIS Scrooge’s very bad Christmas Eve begins with an unexpected visit from his longtime business partner, Jacob Marley (Chris Hoch) — unexpected because Marley died seven years ago. Now he’s a spirit wandering the cosmos weighed down by heavy chains because he was such a miserable son-of-a-bitch during his life. Both the Victorian costumes and the minimalist scenic design are by Rob Howell.

BI-GHOSTAL This is not, as one might say, your Madison Square Garden’s or local high school’s “Christmas Carol.” Yes, Scrooge is still visited by three spirits during the night, each one with lessons to teach, but adjustments have been made. The Ghost of Christmas Past, often portrayed as an ethereal (sometimes translucent, sometimes glowing) figure, is played, by Andrea Martin, as a very solid earthling.

GOURMAND VS. SHOOTER And what about the Ghost of Christmas Present? He’s usually shown as a robust, merry soul in a luxurious robe, surrounded by a feast of food and drink. That’s Edward Woodward in the black-and-white photo below, alongside George C. Scott (Campbell Scott’s father — but you knew that) as Scrooge in a 1984 television-movie version. In the new production, the Ghost of Christmas Present, played by LaChanze, seems to be a street vendor with a gun,

BELLE, BOOK AND CANDLE And Belle, the young beauty loved by the 20-something Ebenezer Scrooge? The gentle soul who broke off their engagement when she realized that he had come to care more about money than human feeling? You won’t see her as a spinster, tending to charity cases. She’s married with children — and so psychologically self-aware that she can tell Ebenezer that she’s happy now but is glad he was part of her story.

AT THIS THEATER And the changes keep coming. Tiny Tim, whose character was always shown with a crutch and described as “the little lame boy,” is played by two young actors with cerebral palsy (Sebastian Ortiz and Jai Ram Srinivasan). Audiences see Scrooge’s father (also played by Hoch) for the first time, and it’s clearly all his fault.. Cast members give fruit and cookies to audience members. (Don’t even ask about the Christmas-cornucopia gimmick at the end.) And — I promise to double-check this — was Mr. Fezziwig (Evan Harrington) always an undertaker?

CAROL OF THE BELLS. Surely there must be music in the new production. There is! Street performers in Victorian black accompany themselves with gleaming brass bells. Jack Thorne, currently represented on Broadway by “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” wrote the adaptation. Matthew Warchus, whose recent Broadway credits include “Groundhog Day” and “Matilda,” directed.