The Lisbon Traviata

In Act I, he takes temporary refuge at the apartment of fellow opera aficionado Mendy to dish about divas, listen to records, and avoid thinking about his rapidly unravelling eight-year relationship.

Two thousand copies of an unauthorized recording made by a cast member during a live performance, despite their amateur quality, quickly became collector's items among the diva's fans.

Directed by John Tillinger, the cast featured Richard Thomas as Stephen, Nathan Lane as Mendy, Dan Butler as Mike and Sean O'Bryan as Paul.

[10] Toby Silverman Zinman wrote that The Lisbon Traviata was important in McNally's progress to becoming a "mature and contemplative theatrical voice", noting that the characters were more "fully developed" with complicated relationships.

"[1] Wayne Koestenbaum writes about The Lisbon Traviata in his book The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire (1993),[12] as does David Román in Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, and AIDS (1998).

[13] Theatre scholar Jordan Schildcrout examines the critical response to different versions of the play and comments on the significance of "operatic violence" in his book Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater (2014).