Laurence O'Keefe (composer)

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Laurence O'Keefe, also known as Larry, is a composer and lyricist for Broadway musicals, film and television.

Until recently he was best known for writing the score for Bat Boy: The Musical, which ran off-Broadway from March 3 to December 2, 2001, followed by over 200 regional and amateur productions all over the USA. Bat Boy received eight Drama Desk Award nominations, including nods for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, and won both the Lucille Lortel Award and the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical.

In 2004 O'Keefe won the Ed Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics, a $100,000 prize. There are two Kleban Awards every year, one given to a lyricist, the other to a book writer. There is no Kleban award for composers. In American arts and letters, only the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the MacArthur Foundation "genius grants" come with a bigger purse.

Bat Boy opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre on London's West End on September 8, 2004, and ran till January 12, 2005. Bat Boy has also been produced to acclaim in Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

With his wife and co-writer Nell Benjamin, O'Keefe has also written two musicals for TheatreWorks USA: Cam Jansen, and Sarah, Plain And Tall. Benjamin and O'Keefe also collaborated on a short musical entitled The Mice, which was produced by Hal Prince as a part of the three-show evening 3hree in Philadelphia, in 2000. Benjamin is also a Kleban Award winner for her lyrics.

Larry and Nell's current project, Legally Blonde: The Musical, opened in San Francisco in February 2, 2007, and opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on April 29, 2007. For their work on Legally Blonde, Larry and Nell received Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Score.

Larry is a graduate of Harvard College, where he studied anthropology and was an active member of the Harvard Lampoon and the Krokodiloes. Additionally, Larry got his start in musical theater through Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals, performing in two of the Pudding's drag burlesques, composing two others (notably Suede Expectations, book by Mo Rocca), and penning the libretto of a fourth (Romancing the Throne).