McNally takes up the issue in his new play, Some Men, which will have its world premiere next week at Philadelphia Theatre Company. His Tony-winning drama about Maria Callas, Master Class, also premiered at PTC, and it was partly on the strength of that experience that the theater company offered and McNally accepted this new invitation.

A strong presence in American theater for more than 40 years, McNally is prolific and varied. He writes about love, both gay (the Tony-winning Love! Valour! Compassion!) and straight (Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune). He writes serious drama like A Perfect Ganesh and the books for the musicals The Full Monty, Ragtime, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. He writes about artistic passion (Prelude and Liebestod) and sexual passion; his interest in music is deep and informs almost everything he writes.

So it is no surprise when McNally says his new play will use familiar songs to guide us through Some Men's 15 scenes. Though reticent about details, he said the play begins and ends in the present day, and in between provides a look at the evolution of gay marriage.

Same-sex marriage is a topic McNally speaks vociferously about, insisting that without health and Social Security benefits, property rights, etc., gay partners are relegated to being "Grade B citizens."

He and Kirdahy went to Vermont, he said, to make a political statement. But "it turned out to be very emotional to stand in public and take those vows, to look into another person's eyes and say those most powerful words, 'For better or for worse,' " he recalled. While he didn't expect to be so moved by the event, it both "escalated their commitment" and inspired this play.

Although he is willing to say that Some Men is unlike anything he has written before, he is unwilling to give much away, noting that a play is "a living, breathing thing; no one knows what a new play is about until there is an audience."

Years ago, he said, "This topic would not have occurred to me: The closet was where I thought I'd live my life; I figured I'd find a way to make the closet work. And then the drag queens at Stonewall refused to do that - they are unlikely heroes, and we owe them a lot."

McNally firmly believes that the issue of same-sex marriage will eventually go before the U.S. Supreme Court. "It may be five years or may be 20 years off. You cannot legislate love," he said. "This is not just a hot issue, but a human one. Hearts have to be changed before minds." He also deeply believes that plays, like Some Men, can help that change happen.

All 10 actors in the cast will play multiple roles as the scenes move through the 20th century. Two of the actors, John Glover and Stephen Bogardus, have worked with McNally in the past, and he said he had them in mind when he wrote this play.

Both were in the original cast of Love! Valour! Compassion! - Glover played the twins (one evil, one good) in the New York production and also the film version, and won both a Tony and an Obie for his performance. TV viewers may know Glover from his role as Lionel Luthor in TV's Smallville. Local audiences saw him in 2004 in PTC's production of Edward Albee's The Goat.

"I love Philly," said Glover, who spent three seasons here acting with the Drama Guild in the mid-1970s. "It's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I have a lot of old friends here, although I'm sick about Judy's [restaurant] closing. We all used to go there and feast."

Glover, who plays seven roles in Some Men, among them an uncle and a nephew in the same family, was speaking on his cell phone, on his way to rehearsal. It would be the company's first run-through of the entire script, having so far rehearsed only individual scenes.

He called it an "exciting" process. McNally comes to rehearsal every day and sits, rewriting on a laptop, talking aloud to himself, "being all of us," and then prints out the new material for the cast, Glover said.

The playwright kept reminding the actors not to get bogged down in sentimentality and to play the humor in the show - one of McNally's "tools to get inside an audience," as Glover sees it.

Glover said he thought that the play should make audiences think about all the kinds of marriages, and the difficulty of honesty and commitment and communication. Asked if he is married, he said he has been in a relationship for 13 years. Asked whether same-sex marriage was an issue that mattered to him, he said to ask him again when the run of the play was over, after he had lived with its ideas for a while. Stay tuned.

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