Terrence McNally, the Tony Award-winning playwright who taught and babysat John Steinbeck’s boys when they were hard-to-manage teenagers, has died in Sarasota, Florida from complications of the COVID-19 virus which shuttered Broadway and much of the world’s business after being declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. A survivor of lung cancer, McNally, 81, was a 20-something graduate student at Columbia University when Steinbeck family friend Edward Albee recommended him as a tutor and companion for Steinbeck’s sons Thom and John IV during an extended tour of Europe taken by the Steinbeck family 60 years ago. As noted in a March 24, 2020 profile of the playwright published in The Guardian, “McNally’s long career began in 1961 when John Steinbeck asked him to work together on a number of projects, including a musical version of East of Eden” which, like other projects following the failure of the 1955 musical Pipe Dream, never materialized.
Composite image of Terrence McNally courtesy New York Post.
About Administrative Team
McNally spoke about his time with the Steinbeck family when he visited San José State in 2008.
Nick Taylor is Professor of English and Director of the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies at the university.
A gutsy, prolific playwright who along wth writers like Christopher Durang and Arthur Kopit as well as Edward Albee shook up the theater world and beyond, with plays like And Things that Go Bump in the Night. Less rebelious it seemed in later years with more traditional though none the less effective drama like Master Class, a study of Maria Callas’ art and life. I think Steinbeck must have looked upon McNally and Albee as interestingly talented and brave writers not heeding his warning that the theater would break their hearts.
Steve Hauk is a playwright and author in Pacific Grove, California.