Musical writer Stephen Clark dies

The playwright and lyricist Stephen Clark, who wrote the book and lyrics for Love Story and lyrics for a re-worked version of Martin Guerre has died.

Clark also wrote plays such as Stripped, which won him a Stephen Jefferson Award and Takeaway, which ran at the the Lyric Hammersmith.

He studied with Stephen Sondheim at Oxford Univeristy and his first musical was Eyam which ran at The Old Fire Station and Bridewell Theatre. It was about a village in Derbyshire in 1665, during the plague.

In 2010 he wrote the book and lyrics for Love Story which opened at Chichester Festival Theatre. Howard Goodall wrote the music for the piece, which was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Musical.

Recently, Clark had co-written Carmen La Cubana, a version of Carmen Jones, set in Cuba, which opened at Théâtre du Châtelet, in April this year. He was working on the book and lyrics for the musical of Mu-Lan.

His friend the composer Goodall tweeted today:

My dear friend of 25 yrs, co-writer of Love Story, kind, gentle, brave, funny, clever Stephen Clark, died early this morning in hospital. pic.twitter.com/ltRPnVjvDv