Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Playwright explored gay themes, winning 4 Tonys
NEW YORK — Terrence McNally, 81, one of America’s great playwrights whose prolific career included winning Tony Awards for the plays “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class” and the musicals “Ragtime” and “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” has died of complications from the coronavirus.
McNally died Tuesday at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, according to representative Matt Polk. McNally was a lung cancer survivor who lived with chronic inflammatory lung disease.
His plays and musicals explored how people connect — or fail to. With wit and thoughtfulness, he tackled the strains in families, war and relationships and probed the spark and costs of creativity. He was an openly gay writer who wrote about homophobia, love and AIDS.
McNally’s “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” about two married couples who spend a weekend on Fire Island, was a landmark play about AIDS. His play “The Ritz” became one of the first plays with unapologetic gay characters to reach a mainstream audience.
McNally also explored gay themes in the book for the musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” for which he won his first Tony Award. His play “Love! Valour! Compassion!” earned him another Tony Award for its portrayal of eight gay men facing issues of fidelity, love and happiness. “Theater changes hearts, that secret place where we all truly live,” he said at the 2019 Tony Awards, where he accepted a lifetime achievement award. “The world needs artists more than ever to remind us what truth and beauty and kindness really are.”
F. Murray Abraham, the Oscar-winner who appeared on Broadway in “The Ritz,” said of McNally: “His plays are a pleasure to do, but what he says is important too. And he’s like a fountain, he keeps on writing and writing and writing.”
Tributes poured in online from Broadway figures, including from fellow playwrights Paula Vogel, who called McNally “the soul of kindness,” and LinManuel Miranda, who called McNally “a giant in our world, who straddled plays and musicals deftly.”
In 2018 McNally was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He won four Tonys and an Emmy.
Some of his Broadway musical adaptations include “The Full Monty,” adapted from the British film and scored by David Yazbek; “Catch Me if You Can,” based on the Steven Spielberg film and scored by composer Marc Shaiman and lyricist Scott Wittman; and “Ragtime,” the musical based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow, which won four Tony Awards. In 2017, his musical reworking of the film “Anastasia” landed on Broadway.
McNally had an offBroadway hit in 1969 with “Next,” a two-character comedy about a reluctant draftee reporting for an Army physical. A string of successes followed, including “Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?” (1971), “The Tubs” (1974), “Bad Habits” (1974) and “The Ritz” (1975), a farce set in a gay bathhouse that ran more than a year on Broadway and became McNally’s first produced screenplay.
His breakout, “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” about a romance between a waitress and short order cook, was later adapted into a film starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer.
When picking up his “Ragtime” Tony Award, McNally thanked the theater community for its outcry. “You came together when I was in trouble. It was a time of oppression. You came together overnight. Our voices were heard, and we won.” Holding his Tony high, he said, “So this is for freedom. Thank you.”