Laurence O'Keefe

Laurence Crawford "Larry" O'Keefe (born 1969) is an American composer and lyricist for Broadway musicals, film and television.

O'Keefe was born in 1969.

He is the second of three sons born to writer and editor Daniel O'Keefe and his wife Deborah.

All three sons also became writers.

Laurence O'Keefe is a graduate of Harvard College (1991), where he studied anthropology, wrote humor for the Harvard Lampoon, and sang with the Harvard Krokodiloes.

He got his start in musical theater through Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals, performing in the Pudding's drag burlesques.

He also composed Suede Expectations, book by Mo Rocca, and wrote a libretto for another production, Romancing the Throne.

O'Keefe later studied composition and film scoring at Berklee College of Music and the University of Southern California, receiving a master's degree in composition for film and television.

O'Keefe has composed music and lyrics for a wide variety of works.

He won the 2001 Lucille Lortel Award, Outstanding Musical as composer for Bat Boy: The Musical.

He wrote the score for Bat Boy: The Musical, which ran Off-Broadway from March 3 to December 2, 2001.

Bat Boy received eight Drama Desk Award nominations, including for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, won two Richard Rodgers Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and won both the Lucille Lortel Award and the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical.

It has since been produced by more than 500 regional and amateur companies across the USA.

In 2001, O'Keefe received the Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Award.

Bat Boy: The Musical opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre on London's West End on September 8, 2004, and ran until January 15, 2005.

Bat Boy: The Musical has also been produced in Seoul, South Korea, and Tokyo and Osaka in Japan, and at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In 2004 O'Keefe won the Ed Kleban Award for Outstanding Lyrics, a $100,000 prize, in part for his work on Bat Boy.

There are two Kleban Awards every year, one given to a lyricist, the other to a book writer.

O'Keefe and his wife Nell Benjamin's Legally Blonde: The Musical opened in San Francisco on February 2, 2007.

It opened on Broadway at the Palace Theatre on April 29, 2007, and closed on October 19, 2008.

For their work on Legally Blonde, they received Drama Desk nominations for Outstanding Music and Outstanding Lyrics, as well as a Tony Award nomination for Best Score.

The first national tour of Legally Blonde opened at the Providence Performing Arts Center on September 23, 2008.

While nearly identical to the Broadway production, the touring production received considerably more enthusiastic reviews than the Broadway version, and was more profitable.

The first national tour ended August 15, 2010, at the Wolf Trap Arts Center in Vienna, Virginia.

Legally Blonde opened on January 12, 2010, at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End, starring UK television stars Sheridan Smith, Jill Halfpenny and Peter Davison, plus pop star Duncan James.

Many reviews were positive, especially for the cast.

The Independent reviewer wrote: "Totally blown away...it's ridiculously enjoyable from start to finish."

The Guardian reviewer concluded "the predominantly female audience with whom I saw the show seemed to be having a whale of a time and did not give a damn about the fact that the musical is little more than a nonsensical fairytale."

Legally Blonde won three 2011 Laurence Olivier Awards including Best New Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Sheridan Smith and Best Supporting Performance in a Musical for Jill Halfpenny.

The show has had several tours worldwide, including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

It premiered to a sold-out audience at the Ronacher Theatre in Vienna, Austria.

With co-author Kevin Murphy, O'Keefe co-wrote Heathers: The Musical, a musical based on the movie of the same name.

Directed by Andy Fickman, the musical premiered at the Hudson Backstage Theatre in Los Angeles in September 2013.

The musical then was produced Off-Broadway in 2014 at the New World Stages Theatre.

Heathers received its UK premiere at The Other Palace in London in June 2018.

Starring Carrie Hope Fletcher as Veronica and Jamie Muscato as JD, the production was a huge hit; on the first day tickets went on sale, the demand for tickets crashed the Other Palace website twice, and whole eight-week limited run sold out before opening night.

The show moved to the West End, opening at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on September 14, 2018.

The musical received six nominations for the 2019 Whatsonstage.com Awards, including Best New Musical (winner), Best Actor In A Musical (Muscato), Best Actress In A Musical (winner, Fletcher), Best Director (Andy Fickman) and

Best Lighting Design (Ben Cracknell).

O'Keefe and his wife Nell Benjamin collaborated on a short musical titled The Mice.