Nicole Scherzinger

So, in the end, it wasn’t so much Oh, Mary! as it was Not Tonight, Mary! Cole Escola’s out-there, queer-as-they-come farce, revolving around the strained relationship between the “foul and hateful” Mary Lincoln, a dipsomaniac with ambitions to be a cabaret singer, and honest Abe, here presented as a pitiful figure so deep in the closet he may as well be in Narnia, was widely regarded as the play to beat at this year’s Tonys. There hasn’t been an out-and-out comedy that’s won the major awards for a considerable time, let alone one that emerged from off-Broadway, and it’s testament to Escola’s prowess (as well as some of the most laudatory reviews in recent memory), that it was front-runner for Best Play.

Sunset Boulevard is a re-telling of the Oedipus story set in the cut-throat world of Hollywood. Pick a side in this tortured yarn. There’s Norma, a burned-out sex-goddess, who wants to make a comeback as a teenage ballerina in a dance epic. Or there’s Joe, a penniless scribbler, who becomes Norma’s reluctant toyboy while he works on her doomed screenplay (which stands for a stillborn child). Clinging to Joe is Betty, a drippy girlfriend who represents escape and artistic integrity. The final piece in the jigsaw is Norma’s discarded husband, Max, who stands for sadistic and destructive obsession. Each day he sends Norma a new batch of counterfeit love letters from non-existent fans.