Washington Blade - April 30, 2004
Patrick Folliard

The AIDS epidemic and homophobia figure largely in four of his plays: "Lisbon Traviata"(1985, and revised in 1989); "Lips Together, Teeth Apart" (1991); "A Perfect Ganesh" (1993); and "Love! Valour! Compassion!" (1994).

During the late 1990s, McNally, 64, drew the ire of the religious right when he portrayed Jesus as a sexually active teenager in "Corpus Christi" (1999), the playwright's hometown.

Nonetheless, his themes of difficulty in connecting and the need for love in relationships are universal.

The four-time Tony Award winner is scheduled Monday, May 10, to receive the Helen Hayes Tribute at the Helen Hayes Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The tribute is presented annually to someone who has made a significant contribution to the American theater. Honorees have included actors James Earl Jones, Mary Martin, Angela Lansbury, Jane Alexander, gay composer Stephen Sondheim and playwright August Wilson.

Victor Shargai, the awards chair, said McNally was selected because he has enhanced the lives of so many people through his art, and because so many of his plays have been performed in the Washington area.

"McNally has a great deal to say," Shargai says. "In the evolution of dramatic works, he writes about relationships between men without ever disguising a character as a woman. It's what it is and nothing else. It's truer."

"Sometimes journalists who aren't familiar with my work ask me if 'Angels in America' influenced me to write gay characters," says McNally, during a telephone interview from his home in Manhattan.

In reality, more than 20 years before Tony Kushner's AIDS opus premiered, McNally's very first play, "And Things That Go Bump in the Night," caused a stir partly because of its frank portrayal of a gay character. It was 1964 and not all of Broadway was ready for what the 25-year-old McNally had to say.

The playwright, who was raised in South Texas, recounts that it was never a big deal for him to include gay characters and gay content in his work. He never perceived himself as being courageous or pushing the envelope in any way.

"As a gay man, it seems you're going to write gay characters," he says. "You're not going to do it all the time, but a considerable amount of the time you will. It's just something that I did. It was an organic thing. It's just how the first thing that I wrote turned out."

McNally says "And Things That Go Bump" was unusual in that it was his first play and it made it to Broadway. Still, it was very badly received and, consequently, he had to go back to work doing odd jobs.

"I think you become a better playwright by writing plays and not doing other jobs. Life experience is important, but it's hard to write a play and it's best if you can come to it fresh and not after eight hours of doing something else," he says. "I was very lucky a couple of years later with my next play, 'Next.' It was pretty successful and I was able to begin making my living as a playwright then. Sometimes, it's been an extremely modest living, but I've not had to take any other jobs. I consider myself very lucky."

IT'S OFTEN REPORTED that McNally didn't really hit his stride until the 1980s, with his critical and commercial success "Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune" (1987), the story of two middle-aged losers in love.

McNally strongly disagrees, citing the popular success of "The Ritz" (1974), a farce set in a gay bathhouse that was later made into a movie. He also includes "Bad Habits" (1973) and "Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?" (1971) in this group of interim successes.

"I think the problem today is that a lot of people go to the Internet for their research and take what they read as gospel," McNally says. "Whoever did my bio that comes up on Google must have decided my earlier plays aren't worth mentioning. It also has in there that I won the Pulitzer Prize, which I never have. I need to set those Google people straight."

AS MCNALLY'S CAREER progressed, he began to turn his attention to the musical stage. Collaborating with John Kander and Fred Ebb, he wrote the book for "The Rink" (1974) and "The Kiss of the Spider Woman" (1993). He teamed with Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahren and wrote the book for "Ragtime" (1996), and later "The Full Monty," with music and lyrics by David Yazbek.

"In no way is it slumming for a playwright to write a book for a musical, but I think that's the perception in the public mind," McNally says. "Writing a book for a musical is not 'playwriting lite.' It's hard to write a play, and it's hard to write a musical. The difference is that writing for a musical is more collaborative, and it's usually an adaptation. Ideally, it ought to seem like the same person wrote the book, the music and the lyrics. With 'Ragtime,' it's me, Ahrens, and Flaherty trying to recapture the voice of E. L. Doctorow."

In the tradition of McNally's favorite playwrights, William Shakespeare and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, who wrote for a company of players, McNally attests that he also enjoys writing for certain actors, but he doesn't always get to work with them.

"Good casting is an actor whose sense of humor or worldview is similar to yours, so they have the right attitude toward the work. It can't be taught. It's instinctive," he says. "I've worked successfully with actors whom I'm not crazy about offstage, but when the really good actors are your friends and they understand your work, all you do is have fun really."

One actor he enjoys working with is Nathan Lane, who is gay and appeared in "Lisbon Traviata" and "Lips Together."

"The first thing [we] did together was 'Lisbon Traviata,'" McNally says. "He picked up the script and it was just extraordinary. It was the same thing with Zoe Caldwell [who won a Tony for her portrayal of Maria Callas in McNally's 'Master Class']. When you find these people you try to stick with them as much as you can."

In the theater, a dazzling career like McNally's is beyond rare. Today, with all of the impossible money strictures, it's even more difficult to become a successful playwright.

"I think anyone who is talented can have a career today. Whether they can have my career is a different story," McNally says. "It's harder to get a commercial production today than when I first started. There's no question. It's more difficult for me. It's more difficult for Arthur Miller than it was 30 or 40 years ago.

"It's the money factor," he says. "It costs a lot of money to put a play on. It costs a lot of money to go see one. So, it makes everyone very cautious."

McNally says people in theater today might be more committed than ever because it's so much more difficult to get started.

"But there is still an enormous amount of off Broadway and workshop groups," he adds. "I am a believer that if there is a will there is a way. I would never discourage anyone from writing for the theater. It just takes a different strategy."

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