A twist at the Oscars

It is the oldest plot twist in the book: the wrong contents in the envelope. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hand over a letter to the King of England meant to seal Hamlet’s death, only Hamlet has swapped it for their own death sentence. At the Oscars on Sunday it wasn’t a life-and-death matter. It was more serious: the name of Best Picture. With PricewaterhouseCoopers in charge of counting votes and delivering winners’ name cards, what could possibly go wrong? Yet somehow Faye Dunaway read out La La Land, instead of

Moonlight. The La La Landers were up on stage and excruciatingly into their emotional speeches before having to slink away as the Moonlighters took over. What drama awaits next year? That the best actress and the US president were swapped as babies? From now on nothing is too improbable.