RIP Terrence McNally

1938-2020

Described as “the bard of American theater” playwright Terrence McNally was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1996. He received the 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the highest recognition of artistic merit in the United States.

He received the Tony Award for Best Play for Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class, as well as the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime. His other accolades included an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards, and three Hull-Warriner Awards.

His work centered on the difficulties of and urgent need for human connection

So what, you may ask, is his connection to Lucille Ball?  

In Love! Valour! Compassion! Buzz, a musical theater aficionado (Nathan Lane on Broadway) breaks the fourth wall (a common conceit of the play) to tell the audience something personal.

This was not the only time McNally’s characters mentioned the famous redhead, in Corpus Christi (1998), Joshua, who represents Jesus, has this exchange:

The controversial play was not without its critics:

McNally himself mentioned Lucille Ball in an interview:

McNally was 81 years old and died from complications of COVID-19.