Hugh Leonard | Irish playwright, 82

Hugh Leonard, 82, the Irish playwright and commentator who won a Tony Award in 1978 for his bittersweet father-and-son drama, Da, died Thursday in Dublin after battling various illnesses for more than a year.

Irish President Mary McAleese lauded Mr. Leonard as a writer who "infused his work with a unique wit, all the while demonstrating a great intuition, perceptiveness, and forgiveness of human nature."

He was born John Keyes Byrne but took the pen name Hugh Leonard in the archconservative Catholic Ireland of the 1950s to hide from his Irish civil-service employers his double life as an aspiring, outspoken writer.

He quit his job in 1957 after the triumph of his first play, The Birthday Party, the year before.

In the 1960s, he became Ireland's most accomplished adapter of classic works and short stories for the Irish stage and screen. He wrote 16 plays specifically for the Dublin Theatre Festival, starting with A Walk on the Water in 1960, and served as the festival's program director from 1978 to 1980. He went international when Da had a two-year run on Broadway in 1977 and 1978.

- AP