Richard Greenberg, Award-Winning Playwright of Take Me Out and More, Dies at 67

Richard Greenberg, the Tony-winning playwright of Take Me Out, has died, according to social media posts from friends and colleagues.

Greenberg, a Long Island native, was the author of more than 30 plays and the theater’s premiere chronicler (and lampooner) of urbane, upper middle class Jews and WASPs. A graduate of Princeton and Yale School of Drama (with a smattering of Harvard in between), Greenberg had regular theatrical homes on both coasts: Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City and South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, CA.

South Coast Repertory premiered eight of Greenberg’s plays, most recently the 2021 solo drama A Shot Rang Out, written specifically for artistic director David Ivers. The theater also staged Our Mother’s Brief Affair, The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, Night and Her Stars, and The Extra Man. They commissioned his 1998 Pulitzer Prize finalist Three Days of Rain, originally starring John Slattery, Patricia Clarkson, and Jon Tenney. For the New York run, produced by Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC), Bradley Whitford replaced Tenney.

The first New York production of Three Days of Rain was one of many Greenberg collaborations with MTC. The company’s long relationship with him included Broadway stagings of The Violet Hour, Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Eastern Standard, The American Plan, andThe Assembled Parties (Tony-nominated). They presented Greenberg’s last original play in New York, The Perplexed, right before the Covid shutdown.

Plays seen at Lincoln Center Theater were The Babylon Line, The House in Town, and Everett Beekin. For Roundabout Theatre Company, A Naked Girl on the Appian Way was seen on Broadway, with off-Broadway productions of Hurrah At Last (1999) and The Dazzle (2002), which received an Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play and a Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Play

Take Me Out, which explores homophobia, race, and class issues in Major League Baseball, is perhaps Greenberg’s most notable work. After a staging at London’s Donmar Warehouse, it ran off-Broadway at the Public in 2002, before transferring to Broadway in 2003. It ran for 355 performances and won the Tony for Best Play that year, with star Denis O’Hare taking home Best Featured Actor in a Play. Its 2022 revival, presented by Second Stage, received the Tony for Best Revival of a Play, with star Jesse Tyler Ferguson taking home a Tony in the came category that O’Hare won.

Greenberg wrote the book for the musical Far From Heaven, and adapted the script for Roundabout’s 2008 revival of Pal Joey. A musical version of The Violet Hour, written by Will Reynolds and Eric Price, is in development; a studio cast recording was released in 2022.

In addition, Greenberg adapted Breakfast at Tiffany’s into a short-lived Broadway drama, and penned a new version of Strindberg’s Dance of Death, which starred Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren on Broadway. A 2006 Broadway production of Three Days of Rain was one of the starrier revivals of the early oughts, featuring the Broadway debuts of Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper, with Paul Rudd rounding out the company.

His last project was a reworking of Philip Barry’s Holiday, which received a one-night reading presented by the Acting Company in 2024 led by Rachel Brosnahan and David Corinswet. Directed by Robert Falls, it’s set to receive a full production at the Goodman in Chicago in early 2026.

Greenberg was 67 at the time of his passing.