Terrence McNally, Tony-Winning Scribe of Love! Valour! Compassion!, Ragtime & More, Dies at 81

Terrence McNally, the celebrated playwright and librettist who penned an award-winning body of work ranging from drama to farce to musical comedy, died on March 24 at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, FL, according to publicist Matt Polk. The cause of death was complications due to coronavirus; McNally was a lung cancer survivor who lived with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 81.

McNally was born on November 3, 1938 in St. Petersburg, FL; he later moved with his family to Port Chester, NY and eventually Corpus Christi, TX. In 1956, he relocated to New York City, where he attended Columbia University as a journalism major. Upon graduation, McNally moved to Mexico to focus on playwriting, eventually returning to the Big Apple.

McNally made his Broadway debut with an adaptation of The Lady of the Camellias (1963), which was followed by the original plays And Things That Go Bump in the Night (1965), Morning, Noon and Night (1968) and an evening of one-acts titled Bad Habits (1974).

He struck gold for Rita Moreno with the farce The Ritz (1975), which won the actress a Tony Award for portraying the over-the-top bathhouse singer Googie Gomez.

As a book writer, much of McNally's successes consisted of musicals written with the songwriting team John Kander and Fred Ebb. The trio's first of many collaborations was The Rink (1984), an original tuner starring Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, the latter of whom took home a Tony Award for her leading turn in the musical.

McNally's later projects penned with Kander and Ebb include Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), which won McNally his first Tony Award (and Rivera her second) and the Tony-nominated The Visit (2011), which also starred Rivera.

Among McNally's other major works are the plays Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995) and Master Class (1996), each of which earned him Tony Awards for Best Play. He took home a fourth Tony for his book to the musical Ragtime (1998), featuring a score by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty.

McNally also teamed up with Ahrens and Flaherty on Broadway for Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life (2005) and Anastasia (2017) and off-Broadway for A Man of No Importance (2002).

McNally's other Tony-nominated work includes the book to The Full Monty (2001) and the play Mothers and Sons (2014); he won a 1990 Emmy Award for the TV adaptation of his play Andre's Mother, which served as the basis for Mothers and Sons. Among his off-Broadway achievements is a Lucille Lortel Award win for Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991).

McNally's 1987 two-hander Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune received its first Broadway staging in 2002. It was revived in 2019, marking his final Broadway credit.

In 2015, McNally received a Lucille Lortel Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2019, he was honored with a Special Tony for Lifetime Achievement. In 2018, a documentary, Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life, was released.

McNally is survived by his husband, producer Tom Kirdahy; his brother, Peter McNally, and his wife, Vicky McNally, their son, Stephen McNally, and his wife, Carmen McNally, and their daughter, Kylie McNally; mother-in-law, Joan Kirdahy, sister/brother-in-laws Carol Kirdahy, Kevin Kirdahy and his wife, Patricia, James Kirdahy and his wife, Nora, Kathleen Kirdahy Kay, Neil Kirdahy and his wife, Sue.