McNally died at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, perhaps the most prominent American casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Terrence McNally, the much-honored and widely loved Tony-winning writer of such acclaimed plays as “Master Class,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and the musicals “Ragtime,” “Kiss of the Spider Woman” and “Anastasia,” died Tuesday at age 81 of COVID-19 complications at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

McNally, who shared a vacation home in Sarasota with his spouse, producer Tom Kirdahy, was a lung cancer survivor who lived with chronic inflammatory lung disease. He carried an oxygen tank when he received a special lifetime achievement Tony Award last June.

He became the most prominent person to date to die amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Over his six-decade career, he became known for penetrating, dark and biting comedies that openly dealt with gay characters, homophobia and fractured relationships with friends and family in such works as “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” “Mother’s and Sons,” and the campy “The Ritz,” which was set partly in a gay bathhouse.

He worked frequently in musical theater. In addition to “Ragtime” and “Spider Woman,” he wrote the books for “The Full Monty” and “The Rink.” He wrote three musicals together with the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb.

Behind the Scenes: Terrence McNally shared his life in his work

He won Tony Awards for best play for “Master Class” and “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and best book of a musical for “Ragtime” and “Spider Woman.”

“I’ve known about him for so long and have been so profoundly influenced by him,” said Michael Donald Edwards, producing artistic director of Asolo Repertory Theatre, who had become friends with McNally and Kirdahy before their arrival in Sarasota several years ago.

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“He’s shaped how I think about what I think it is to be a gay person, what it is to be an artist and what is to be an American,” the Australia native said. “I was reading his plays before I came to live in America. Meeting him and getting to know him has been one of the richest and most joyous things in my life. And to think that he and his wonderful husband would move to Sarasota and become part of the Asolo Rep family.”

The theater had planned to present the musical “Hood,” which Kirdahy is producing, this spring, but the production was canceled because of the coronavirus. Edwards said McNally was still actively writing and “we were working on a new project that he would do with us at Asolo Rep.”

McNally attended the opening of “Ragtime” at Asolo Rep in 2018 and was at the opening of this season’s production of “The Sound of Music.”

McNally was born on Nov. 3, 1938, in St. Petersburg, but in a 2011 interview with the Herald-Tribune, he said he didn’t remember much about the area, where his parents ran a beach club on Pass-a-Grille Beach, not far from the famed Don Cesar Hotel. They left when he was about 3 years old after a “hurricane knocked them out and they moved to Corpus Christi, just around the Gulf, where they also had hurricanes.”

He returned for the first time in 70 years to see a production of “Frankie and Johnny” at American Stage. He said he occasionally visits theaters where his plays are produced, especially if they’re in places where he can combine a vacation and catch up with old friends. At the time, he was looking forward to riding roller coasters at Busch Gardens.

“It’s not like I spend all my time going around the world seeing plays of mine being done,” he said.

His career got its start in 1964 with “And Things That Go Bump in the Night,” but was kick-started by a strong response to “Bad Habits” in 1974 and “The Ritz” in 1975. Along the way there was “The Lisbon Traviata,” which helped to boost the career of actor Nathan Lane, and the controversial “Corpus Christi,” which reimagined the last supper as a gathering of gay men, including Jesus. The Manhattan Theater Club received death threats and temporarily canceled the production before it moved forward and enjoyed a successful run.

In all he wrote 36 plays and 10 musicals, as well the librettos for four operas and several film and television scripts. He had a passion for opera, which was the focus of “Master Class,” about the diva Maria Callas, and “The Lisbon Traviata.”

He said he started working on “Frankie and Johnny” around the time he was 40, when he was “seeing a lot of people, attractive young people of both sexes, in video stores on a Saturday night renting 10 movies. They had given up on finding love and were obviously going to spend the weekend alone watching movies and eating ice cream.”

His play was about a waitress and a short order cook who work together in a diner and wind up in bed together and contemplate the potential for a relationship.

“I think ‘Frankie and Johnny’ inspires people to not go to the video store or Netflix. Someone’s got to take the first step in a relationship. That plays says if you stay home alone in your apartment, your life will end. It’s a call to get out of the house.”

McNally had a years-long relationship with playwright Edward Albee, but he found his life partner when he met Kirdahy during a panel the producer put together on theater from a gay perspective.

They were married in 2003 in a civil union in Vermont, and then in 2010 in Washington, D.C., after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. They married a third time in 2015 at New York City Hall with Mayor Bill de Blasio officiating.

Kirdahy produced a biographical film “Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life” that was featured on PBS last year.

Last June, the night McNally won his special Tony, Kirdahy also won a Tony as the producer of the best musical “Hadestown.”

McNally earned two standing ovations for his acceptance speech, which was cut off from television viewers but was later viewed thousands of times online.

“I love being a playwright,” he said that night. “The hours are flexible and you don’t have to wear a tie unless you’re invited to the Tonys. I’ve loved it since I wrote my first play” about George and Ira Gershwin. He even loved writing after “my first play crashed and burned at the old Royale on West 45th Street and John Steinbeck told me to get right back on the horse.”

More importantly he said, “I love it when I know something I wrote softened the hearts of parents who banished their son and daughter from their lives when they came out to them as gay and lesbian.”

He concluded his remarks by saying, “The world needs artists more than ever to remind us what kindness, truth and beauty are. Oh brave new world that has such people in it. Shakespeare is talking to all of us. No one does it alone. Least of all playwrights. Most of all, this one.”