Arts & Entertainment
Coronavirus claims iconic LGBTQ playwright Terrence McNally
Succumbed to complications from COVID-19 at the age of 81
The theatre community, already hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic, has been dealt a painful blow with the news that Terrence McNally, the 4-time Tony winning playwright whose work portrayed a rich range of human emotional experience and broke barriers in its depiction of gay life, has succumbed to complications from COVID-19 at the age of 81.
McNally, who was a survivor of lung cancer and lived with chronic COPD, died on Tuesday at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida.
Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, McNally grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, where his New York-born parents instilled in him a love for theatre from an early age. After earning a BA at Columbia University in 1960, he developed a relationship with author John Steinbeck, who hired the young playwright to accompany his family on a worldwide cruise as a tutor to his teenage sons. Steinbeck would later enlist McNally to write the libretto for “Here’s Where I Belong,” a musical stage adaptation of the author’s classic novel, “East of Eden.”
During his early years in New York, McNally also developed a relationship with fellow playwright Edward Albee, whom he met when the two shared a cab; the pair were essentially a couple for four years, during the period in which Albee wrote “The American Dream” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” two of his most important works. It was a romance that would cast a shadow over McNally’s early career, when some critics dismissed him as “the boyfriend” after the premiere of his Broadway debut, “And Things That Go Bump in the Night.” The play, which was McNally’s first effort in three acts, flopped due to poor initial reviews – attributed by author Boze Hadleigh in his book, “Who’s Afraid of Terrence McNally,” to homophobia from conservative New York critics – even after subsequent critical reaction and audience response proved to be more favorable.
After the failure of his initial foray onto the Broadway stage, McNally rebounded with an acclaimed one-act, “Next,” which featured James Coco as a middle-aged man mistakenly drafted into the army and was directed by Elaine May, and was presented Off-Broadway in a double bill with May’s “Adaptation” in 1967. Several other one-acts followed, and the playwright gained a reputation for tackling edgy subject matter with sharp social commentary, biting dialogue, and farcical situations. He also attracted early controversy for featuring onstage nudity (from actress Sally Kirkland) for the entire length of his kidnapping drama, “Sweet Eros.”
Success came his way in the seventies, when he racked up an Obie award for 1974’s “Bad Habits,” and a Broadway hit with “The Ritz,” a risqué farce set in a gay bathhouse where a straight middle-aged business man unwittingly goes into hiding to escape his wife’s murderous mafioso brother. Adapted from his own earlier play, “The Tubs,” it was subsequently turned into a 1976 film version (directed by “A Hard Day’s Night” filmmaker Richard Lester), starring original stage cast members Jack Weston, Jerry Stiller, F. Murray Abraham, and Rita Moreno (reprising her Tony-winning role as bathhouse chanteuse Googie Gomez), as well as featuring a blonde-dyed Treat Williams in an early appearance as an undercover cop.
After another series of career setbacks, McNally rebounded again in the eighties with more Off-Broadway acclaim for his play, “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which starred Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham. The playwright has said that it was his first work after becoming sober, telling the New York Times in 2019, “There was certainly a change in my work. It’s hard to know who you are if you’re drunk all the time. It clouds your thinking. I started thinking more about my people — my characters.”
It was in the nineties, however, that McNally blossomed into a master playwright, with plays like “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” which placed AIDS squarely in the backdrop of its story about two married couples spending a weekend on Fire Island, and “Master Class,” a tour-de-force one-woman show about Maria Callas which featured Zoe Caldwell in a widely acclaimed performance.
It was also during this period that McNally wrote “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” an expansive play about a group of gay friends who spend three successive holiday weekends over the course of a summer together at a lake house in upstate New York. Transferring to Broadway after a successful debut at the Manhattan Theatre Club – with which McNally had a long association, and where he developed several of his important works – in a production directed by Joe Mantello, it was a pastoral, introspective, Chekhovian drama that offered deeply-drawn, non-stereotypical portrayals of gay characters confronting the various issues in their lives and their relationships; it was also a snapshot of life at the height of the AIDS crisis, exploring the ways in which the spectre of the disease was an unavoidable part of day-to-day life that encroached upon every aspect of gay experience. McNally’s script, bolstered by the richly human performances of an ensemble cast that included Nathan Lane, John Glover, John Benjamin Hickey, Anthony Heald, and Justin Kirk, countered the potential for moroseness with warmth and humor, and the play is now widely seen, alongside plays such as Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” and Paul Rudnick’s “Jeffrey,” as one of the most important theatrical works of the AIDS era. A film version in 1997 reunited most of the original stage cast, though the notably straight Jason Alexander replaced Lane in the role of Buzz, the most outwardly flamboyant of the play’s eight gay characters.
It was in the nineties when McNally also established himself as an important figure in the musical genre, contributing the libretto for John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “The Rink” (a short-lived musical drama starring Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli) before going on to collaborate again with the legendary score composers on “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” their musical version of the Manuel Puig novel about the unlikely friendship that develops between a political revolutionary and a gay window dresser as they share a cell in a Mexican prison. The musical (which also starred Rivera) was a smash hit and won McNally his first Tony (Best Book for a Musical) in 1993.
In 1998, he won another Tony in the same category for the libretto of “Ragtime,” a widely-acclaimed musical adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel exploring racism against the backdrop of the turn of the 20th Century with a score by Stephen Flaherty and Lynne Ahrens.
His other two Tonys were for “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class,” in 1995 and 1996, respectively.
In his later career, McNally courted controversy once again with “Corpus Christi,” a 1998 “passion play” that queered the biblical story of Jesus and the Apostles by reimagining them as gay men living in modern-day Texas. At the time, the production was met with protests (McNally himself received death threats), although reviewers found its content to be surprisingly uncontroversial, with Jason Zinoman of the New York Times calling it “earnest and reverent” and “more personal than political.”
Other notable dramatic works included “The Lisbon Traviata,”
“It’s Only A Play,” “A Perfect Ganesh,” “The Stendahl Syndrome,” “Mothers and
Sons,” and his last, 2018’s “Fire and Air.” He also wrote librettos for the musicals
“The Full Monty,” “A Man of No Importance,” “Anastasia,” and “The Visit” (also
with Kander and Ebb, and also starring Rivera), and for the operas “Dead Man Walking,”
“Three Decembers,” and “Great Scott.”
He also wrote for television, including an Emmy-winning teleplay for the 1988 AIDS
drama “Andre’s Mother.” For film, he wrote the screenplays for the film
adaptations of his plays, “The Ritz,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!,” and “Frankie
and Johnny at the Clair de Lune” (retitled as simply “Frankie and Johnny”).
Besides his Tony and Emmy wins, he also earned three Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and two Obies, as well as a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
In addition to his four competitive Tonys, he was awarded a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019.
He was also the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Rockefeller Grant.
McNally is survived by his husband, Thomas Kirdahy, whom he wed in 2010 after a long relationship. Other survivors include a brother Peter McNally, and his wife Vicky McNally, along with their children and grandchildren; also listed among the survivors are Mother-in-Law Joan Kirdahy, sister/brother-in-laws Carol Kirdahy, Kevin Kirdahy, James Kirdahy, Kathleen Kirdahy Kay, and Neil Kirdahy.
Arts & Entertainment
In an act of artistic defiance, Baltimore Center Stage stays focused on DEI
‘Maybe it’s a triple-down’
By LESLIE GRAY STREETER | I’m always tickled when people complain about artists “going political.” The inherent nature of art, of creation and free expression, is political. This becomes obvious when entire governments try to threaten it out of existence, like in 2025, when the brand-new presidential administration demanded organizations halt so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programming or risk federal funding.
Baltimore Center Stage’s response? A resounding and hearty “Nah.” A year later, they’re still doubling down on diversity.
“Maybe it’s a triple-down,” said Ken-Matt Martin, the theater’s producing director, chuckling.
The rest of this article can be found on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
‘La Lucci’
By Susan Lucci with Laura Morton
c.2026, Blackstone Publishing
$29.99/196 pages
They’re among the world’s greatest love stories.
You know them well: Marc Antony and Cleopatra. Abelard and Heloise. Phoebe and Langley. Cliff and Nina. Jesse and Angie, Opal and Palmer, Palmer and Daisy, Tad and Dixie. Now read “La Lucci” by Susan Lucci, with Laura Morton, and you might also think of Susan and Helmut.
When she was a very small girl, Susan Lucci loved to perform. Also when she was young, she learned that words have power. She vowed to use them for good for the rest of her life.
Her parents, she says, were supportive and her family, loving. Because of her Italian heritage, she was “ethnic looking” but Lucci’s mother was careful to point out dark-haired beauties on TV and elsewhere, giving Lucci a foundation of confidence.
That’s just one of the things for which Lucci says she’s grateful. In fact, she says, “Prayers of gratitude are how I begin and end each day.”
She is particularly grateful for becoming a mother to her two adult children, and to the doctors who saved her son’s life when he was a newborn.
Lucci writes about gratitude for her long career. She was a keystone character on TV’s “All My Children,” and she learned a lot from older actors on the show, and from Agnes Nixon, the creator of it. She says she still keeps in touch with many of her former costars.
She is thankful for her mother’s caretakers, who stepped in when dementia struck. Grateful for more doctors, who did heart-saving work when Lucci had a clogged artery. Grateful for friends, opportunities, life, grandchildren, and a career that continues.
And she’s grateful for the love she shared with her husband, Helmut Huber, who died nearly four years ago. Grateful for the chance to grieve, to heal, and to continue.
And yet, she says of her husband: “He was never timid, but I know he was afraid at the end, and that kills me down to my soul.”
“It’s been 15 years since Erica Kane and I parted ways,” says author Susan Lucci (with Laura Morton), and she says that people still approach her to confirm or deny rumors of the show’s resurrection. There’s still no answer to that here (sorry, fans), but what you’ll find inside “La Lucci” is still exceptionally generous.
If this book were just filled with stories, you’d like it just fine. If it was only about Lucci’s faith and her gratitude – words that happen to appear very frequently here – you’d still like reading it. But Lucci tells her stories of family, children and “All My Children,” while also offering help to couples who’ve endured miscarriage, women who’ve had heart problems, and widow(ers) who are spinning and need the kindness of someone who’s lived loss, too.
These are the other things you’ll find in “La Lucci,” in a voice you’ll hear in your head, if you spent your lunch hours glued to the TV back in the day. It’s a comfortable, fun read for fans. It’s a story you’ll love.
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Theater
Minimal version of ‘Streetcar Named Desire’ heading to Dupont Underground
Director Nick Westrate on this traveling take on Williams’s masterwork
‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Produced by The Streetcar Project
April 20-May 4
Dupont Underground
19 Dupont Circle, N.W.
Tickets start at $85.
Dupontunderground.org
An aggressively minimal version of Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” is poised to run at Dupont Underground (April 20-May 4), the nonprofit cultural space located in a repurposed, abandoned 1949 streetcar station beneath Dupont Circle.
The Streetcar Project’s production performs in site-specific spaces. It’s almost entirely without design elements. There is no steamy, cramped Vieux Carré apartment. You won’t see Blanche’s battered trunk exploding with cheap finery, faded love letters, and demands for back property taxes, or the familiar costumes.
Co-created by Lucy Owen (who stars as Blanche DuBois) and out director Nick Westrate in 2023, this traveling spare take on Williams’s masterwork about a fragile woman on the margins in conflict with her brutish brother-in-law seems a reaction to necessity. It’s also an exploration of whether, like Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” it can subsist on language alone.
With little distractions (even Blanche’s cultivated southern belle accent has been daringly stripped away), the spotlight shines almost solely on text. “This play holds that,” says Westrate, 42. “I remind the actors that the while there is plenty of movement, language is really the only game in town.”
New York-based Westrate, who’s best known as an esteemed actor with New York and regional credits including Prior Walter in János Szász’s production of “Angels in America” at Arena Stage, describes “Streetcar” as “the most perfect play on earth” but not one he thinks of acting in (“I’m not right for Stanley Kowalski or Mitch”) though he agreed to direct.
“These days if you’re not a not a movie star or an established director, you’re not likely to do “Streetcar.” So, for us, we have to be able to do it with almost nothing, on the New York subway if necessary. And that’s kind of how we built it.”
Westrate first experienced Dupont Underground while attending a staged reading. He was so obsessed with the space as a prospective place to take the production, he found it hard to concentrate. He says, “With its long, curved track and tunnel, Dupont Underground is a terrifying, beautiful room that carries so much metaphorical weight, so much possibility for our production.”
WASHINGTON BLADE: Is finding the right space for this “Streetcar” part of the thrill?
NICK WESTRATE: Whenever I enter a weird room or pass by an abandoned CVS, I try to figure out how we might do the show there, especially places that are dilapidated, architecturally odd, or possibly haunted. And each space we use, lends something to the production. The Rachel Comey store in Soho was a very Blanche coded space. And an artist’s workshop on Venice Beach in California with its huge saws and metal hooks lent raw imagery. The scenes between Blanche and Stanley near the end were absolutely terrifying.
BLADE: More recently that same bare bones production has played in more traditional spaces like the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen and San Francisco’s A.C.T. Is it hard to now go to Dupont Underground?
WESTRATE: Each time we do this we have to crack open the play again because the staging is entirely new, but we’re used to performing in unusual spaces and Dupont Underground rather takes us back to form. As a former streetcar station, it’s the most appropriate space we’ve had yet.
The cast will literally act on streetcar tracks and go without dressing rooms but they’re game, and because they have history and authorship over the work, the sacrifice is more meaningful than if they were just some hired guns.
BLADE: Audiences have an expectation, especially with a work they’re likely to know. How do they react seeing such an unadorned take on Williams’s American classic?
WESTRATE: For the first 10 or 15 minutes, they’re unsure. Then, you can pretty much see the audience members’ brains click in and their imaginations turn on. It’s like they’re scratching an itch that they didn’t even know they had.
BLADE: Did you and Lucy foresee gaining this kind of momentum behind your vision?
WESTRATE: Absolutely not. Lucy had a philosophy that we’ll just walk through open doors. Early on, we were given spaces and artists filled the seats, and increasingly we’ve begun to rent some spaces and attract more regular theatergoers.
We basically sell tickets in order to pay a living wage to artists involved. There isn’t some big institution or commercial producer who’s getting a lot of money from this. Audiences of all types seem to respond to this mode of making theater.
BLADE: In presenting “Streetcar” intermittently, usually with the same cast over three years in wildly varying venues, have you learned more about a piece that you already loved?
WESTRATE: Mostly I’ve come to realize that Blanche is the smartest character I’ve ever read in a play. She’s like Hamlet – tormented by dreams and terrified of death. She’s skilled at wordplay and always ahead of everyone else in the room. Also like Hamlet, people think she’s insane and she uses that to her advantage.
Blanche is certainly the Everest of roles for actresses and watching Lucy sort of break it apart in a different way than you’ve ever seen, and knowing that I’ve helped to facilitate this performance has been one of the great joys of my career.
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