Thomas Meehan, left, and Mark O'Donnell show off their Tony awards for best book of a Musical for Hairspray on June 8, 2003. O'Donnell died Monday at age 58. (Mary Altaffer/Associated Press)

Mark O'Donnell, the playwright, librettist and comedian who co-wrote Broadway shows Hairspray and Cry-Baby, collapsed and died suddenly on Monday, according to his agent. He was 58.

An autopsy was scheduled to be performed Tuesday to determine cause of death after he was found in the lobby of his Manhattan apartment.

"Mark was a kind soul, a hysterical mind and the real hero of Hairspray. His passing is shocking, our great loss, but heaven's gain," said Hairspray co-songwriter Marc Shaiman in response to his death.

With Thomas Meehan, O'Donnell co-wrote the book for Hairspray, the story of a plump Baltimore teenager who forges a place for herself on a TV dance show and fights for integration of her black friends. They won a Tony Award for best book for the show, which comes across as a parody of 1950s dance movies.

"The structure I had in mind was: Girl does Mash Potato, girl charms Baltimore, girl integrates nation," O'Donnell told The Associated Press in 2002. "My script was like a great Mad magazine article."

Hairspray began life as a John Waters movie before producer Margo Lion chose O’Donnell to write it for the stage. A second movie was created in 2005 after the musical proved to be an enormous popular success on Broadway. It opened in 2002, and it played for nearly seven years.

O’Donnell and Meehan also adapted another Waters work, Cry-Baby, which debuted at La Jolla Playhouse before moving on to Broadway. The show was short-lived, but earned them another Tony nomination.

O'Donnell was born in Cleveland, Ohio, one of a family of 10. He was the identical twin of TV writer, Steve O'Donnell, who was head writer on The David Letterman Show before joining the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show in 2003.

The brothers attended Harvard University together, where Mark was drawn to the Harvard Lampoon and Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

In addition to his stage work, O'Donnell was a comedy writer and short story writer for the New Yorker and The Atlantic. He published the novels Getting Over Homer, a pun-laden story set in the early years of the AIDs epidemic and Let Nothing You Dismay.

His other plays include That's It, Folks! Fables for Friends, The Nice and the Nasty, Strangers on Earth, Vertigo Park and the musical Tots in Tinsel town.

"He was a huge talent, and a warm, witty and wonderful man who marched to his own drummer," said Jack Tantleff, O'Donnell's agent at the Paradigm agency.

With file from The Associated Press