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Adam Bock and Terrence McNally

Photo: Imogen Brown

Terrence McNally and Adam Bock are playwrights who came of age in radically different periods. McNally, 67, is the veteran, a master craftsman of wry comedies and musicals who has toiled on Broadway and Off since 1963. Bock, 45, is no youth, but the Canadian-born San Francisco transplant has been getting attention in only the past five years for his quirky, dark little gems. Both have shows coming up in the fall: a revival of McNally’s 1975 gay bathhouse farce, The Ritz, courtesy of Roundabout Theatre Company, and the world premiere of Bock’s cubicle comedy, The Receptionist, at Manhattan Theatre Club. Both, it so happens, will be staged by Joe Mantello.

On a steamy summer afternoon at a West Village eatery, TONY paired the duo; just before they begin, the luminous Mary-Louise Parker, in the middle of her own interview, darts over to say hi, then glides back to her table. The dramatists order lunch and immediately start gabbing about—what else?—television.

Terrence McNally: I love Weeds. It’s great. Have you seen Mad Men?

Adam Bock: I haven’t.

McNally: We shouldn’t be talking about TV. But it’s good.

Bock: I just got my first movie deal. I can’t imagine doing a TV series: five years of the same story. Pumping out that much material is hard for me. The Thugs was only 50 minutes, and I was exhausted at the end of writing it. I’m a bit of a slow writer. Are you fast?

McNally: Depends on the deadline. I’m lazy, but fast when I have to be.

Bock: I hear you’re working on a great project now. Someone I know just saw the workshop of Catch Me If You Can.

McNally: Yeah, that’s Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman and Jack O’Brien. Basically it’s the Hairspray team, plus me. With musicals, you have to like the story as much as a play of your own. Ragtime is one of my favorite books. I don’t think I would have done a very good job on, say, Legally Blonde.

Bock: I love musicals. But I don’t get them. I just saw Gypsy at City Center, and it was like the whole audience wanted to eat Patti LuPone.

McNally: I saw the only performance of Gypsy where people didn’t turn around after the overture to see where Mama Rose would enter. It was opening night in 1959. I was a junior at Columbia. The overture ended, and I was aware of someone standing over my shoulder, in the aisle. I was annoyed, and looked over. Ethel Merman!

Bock: It’s interesting to learn the business half of all this. I’m used to working downtown, and only five years ago I was in San Francisco, where a 100-seat theater is pretty big.

McNally: There’s a mystique about having a play on Broadway. Even though when you work at MTC or the Roundabout, you certainly don’t work any less. The stakes seem higher. Most of my plays began in small theaters.

Bock:The Thugs was small. Eight characters, but in a tiny space at Soho Rep.

McNally: It was a great production, too.

Bock: How is The Ritz looking, after 30 years?

McNally: We’ll see. Joe [Mantello] and I just did a read-through with the cast. I couldn’t believe this play ran for a year on Broadway. It’s very subversive. But I don’t think it’ll be shocking anymore.

Bock: You don’t?

McNally: I hope not. I think people know these things existed. But it was really wild when we did it.

Bock: I love that it’s a sort of community. The bathhouse sex club where people know each other: “Hi, how ya doing? You’re back again.…”

McNally: I realized it’s a play about homophobia and liberation. I think it’s time to look at our community during a period before AIDS, so I’m excited. Writing a farce is hard. It reminds me of an overloaded and overfueled 747 that will never take off, but when it does, it’s great. The only other real revival I’ve had is Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune [in 2002]. There was nervousness there, too. Will the work stand up?

Bock: I’ve seen 20 productions of [my] Swimming in the Shallows. I love watching different versions of it in all these communities. What works here, what doesn’t work in Utah....

McNally: Unless you have the right cast and director, it doesn’t matter how good the play is. A play can be totally fucked by the first production.

Bock: Sometimes I don’t even know how it should be done.

McNally: I hardly write stage directions anymore. Enters and Dies—they’re important. And I learned that Gets dressed is useful. In the third production of Frankie and Johnny I saw outside of New York, the actress playing Frankie gets out of bed naked. Now, when Kathy Bates played the role, she rushed to the closet and put on her robe. But I saw it in Houston, and the woman got out of bed…and then, an hour later…still naked! My parents were freaking out. Nobody was laughing.

Bock: Have you ever tried to write a novel?

McNally: No.

Bock: I went to an artists colony, wrote five chapters, 75,000 words, and I was exhausted. Couldn’t do it. It was endless typing. You just had to say everything. What I like about plays is, you write the language and the director makes them move. It’s my job not to do everything.

McNally: You’re a collaborator. You have to be.

Bock: It’s interesting. I’ve given The Receptionist to Joe. Now I have to spend the rest of this process letting it go.

McNally: Then he has to give it to the actors.

Bock: And the actors let it go to the audience.

McNally: Finally, the stage manager becomes the most important person. It’s a series of lettings-go.

Bock: There’s something joyful about that.

The Ritz is in previews at Studio 54 starting Sept 14; The Receptionist is in previews at Manhattan Theatre Club starting Oct 12.