McNally had taken a while to walk out on stage, leaving the award’s presenter, Karen Olivo, to nervously stare at her monitor. And he came out with attached breathing apparatus, tubes dangling, as if with a certain intentionality. In play after play, McNally wrote about gay Americans confronting early deaths that could have been avoided, had people outside the theater industry given more of a darn. His own appearance put that back in mind. Broadway artists love to complain about the grip of the patriarchy. But an inconvenient truth is that the patriarchy — if you mean straight, white, WASP-ish men — never gave two shakes about the theater. This industry was never banking, or even Hollywood.