Sad news here: Terrence McNally, one of the deans of living American playwrights whose career went back to the early ‘1960s, died today at the age of 81 of complications from coronavirus. The four-time Tony Award recipient was a lung cancer survivor who lived with chronic COPD. He died at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Florida.

Many of his plays were performed zin Connecticut over the years, including, most recently, the script to the musical “Anastasia” at Hartford Stage. and “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” at Westport Country Playhouse. He is survived by his husband Tom Kirdahy, producer of Broadway’s “The Inheritance.” and “Hadestown.”

Here is my interview with him in Philadelphia in 2006 ,where his play “Some Men” was premiering. The piece ran in The Hartford Courant.

By FRANK RIIZO

Terrence McNally is on the sidewalk outside the Plays and Players Theater in downtown Philadelphia, script in hand, quietly going over notes with director Philip Himberg on the playwright's new play, "Some Men."

The episodic work examines the evolution of same-sex marriage but also acts as a chronicle of gay life from the 1920s to the present. On this sunny spring day, McNally appears -- at least outwardly -- relaxed, gracious and far from apprehensive about what the critics may say about his play in a few days. But he has been through this many times and knows the process from page to stage.

At 66, the four-time Tony Award-winning writer has had a prolific 40-plus-year career with plays ("Master Class," "A Perfect Ganesh," "Lips Together, Teeth Apart"), musicals ("Ragtime," "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "The Full Monty"), operas ("Dead Man Walking") and films (from his plays "Love! Valour! Compassion!" and "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune").

"Frankie and Johnny," his two-character study of loneliness, love and the need to make human connections, is in previews and opens Friday at Hartford Stage in a production starring Portia and Robert Clohessy.

"Both 'Frankie and Johnny' and 'Some Men' are about people looking for relationships and commitments, people who are trying to achieve intimacy," says McNally, at a far-from-intimate busy bistro. "Emotional intimacy is often very difficult. I think that's something we all want. The need to be in a loving, nurturing relationship is a very universal one. But if that need gets corrupted or perverted, I think people end up very unhappy, psychotic, suicidal or murderous. If that need is denied, something terrible happens to the soul."

"Some Men" looks at intimacy for gay men.

"Gay men and women found that it was not possible to be in such a relationship -- it was only to be hidden, furtive, shameful, and it came at a terrible cost. It must have been a terrible thing to live with."

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