The Tony Awards

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.

Major awards ceremonies are unpredictable. The Oscars this year were well-behaved, but recent events have boasted everything from "The Slap" to the Curb Your Enthusiasm­-esque farce of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announcing that the wrong film had won Best Picture. Still, that’s nothing compared to the Grammys this year, in which Killer Mike won three awards and celebrated his victory by being led away from the ceremony in handcuffs. So the hope was, for this year’s Seventy-Seventh Tony Awards, that there would be drama, but rather less drama, if you catch my drift. Certainly, there was event.