The four-time Tony winner, 81, become known for his considerate chronicles of gay existence, homophobia, love and AIDS.
McNally turned into a lung most cancers survivor and had lived with a continual obstructive pulmonary disorder.
One of America’s remarkable playwrights, he wrote more than 3 dozen plays in his nearly 60-year profession.
Beginning on Broadway in 1963, McNally still had his name up in lighting till closing 12 months’s revival of his play Frankie and Johnny within the Clair de Lune, starring Audra McDonald.
“I like to paintings with folks that are lots more talented and smarter than me, who make fewer mistakes than I do, and who can call me out when I do something lazy,” he advised the LA Stage Times in 2013.
“A lot of humans stop gaining knowledge of in existence, and that’s their tragedy.”
Broadway and New York theatres – the institutions in which McNally made his mark – had been closed for extra than every week due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Born in St Petersburg, Florida, McNally grew up in Texas before attending Columbia University in New York.
He died in hospital in Sarasota, Florida, on Tuesday, his consultant told US media.
He leaves in the back of his husband. The pair had been joined in a civil union in 2003 in Vermont and married in 2010 in Washington, DC.
McNally’s profession – regularly tackling subject matters and subjects widely seen as debatable – turned into now not with out its stumbles.
His first Broadway play And Things That Go Bump within the Night, written while he turned into just 24, became panned – Newsday known as it “ugly, perverted, tasteless” – and closed in less than three weeks.
Speaking to Vogue magazine in 1995, McNally stated he might “win, hands down, the contest for worst first-area evaluations – or any-play evaluations”.
But McNally persevered, occurring to write down dozens of performs, nearly a dozen musicals and a couple of operas.
He acquired a lifetime fulfillment award at the 2019 Tony Awards.
Standing earlier than the crowd, with respiration tubes visible over his tuxedo, he joked that the accolade came “not a moment too quickly”.
“Theatre adjustments hearts, that mystery region wherein all of us genuinely stay,” he said at the ceremony.
“The global needs artists extra than ever to remind us what fact and splendor and kindness simply are.”