Oh, Mary!
August 31, 2024
I saw Cole Escola, the creator and title character of Oh, Mary! currently at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Decked out with corset and yurt-sized hoop skirt and wearing a wig with ringlets, Escola was asked how much research they had done for Oh, Mary!: “Less than zero.”
When I heard that, I knew I would have a raucous evening.
Oh, Mary!, directed by Sam Pinkleton, ran at the Lucille Lortel in Greenwich Village four months before transferring to the “legitimate” stage. It’s a hit and has been extended. Its premise: What if Lincoln’s assassination hadn’t been such a bad thing for Mary Todd Lincoln? Mary, in Escola’s queer aesthetic world, wanted to be a vaudeville performer. Ok. No research, just something borne from a crazed mind! [Without giving too much away, the 16th president is NOT shot, two-thirds through, by John Wilkes Booth!]
Set in the weeks leading up to the assassination, Mary abhors politics and yearns for life as a cabaret singer. Abraham is obsessed with the war, leaving Mary alone to her own devices in the White House while using her as a beard to hide his sexuality. When Mary, in a fit of fury, climbs onto the president’s desk in the Oval Office, she flings her hoop skirt up towards the audience for us to see heart-patterned boxer shorts — a classic vaudevillian gag. Jackson McHenry, in his review for Vulture, calls Escola’s version of Mary Todd Lincoln “played with all the verve and severity of Bette Davis on bath salts.” For the first sixty minutes, we see Mary battered around, depressed, drunk, and forlorn. The third act of this 80-minute riot, however, shows us Mary really is the undisputed star.
I sat in the first row of the orchestra and opened the playbill. The cast list started the laughter: Mary Todd Lincoln, Mary’s Husband, Mary’s Teacher, Mary’s Chaperone, and Mary’s Husband’s Assistant. From before the curtain rose to the strains of an antebellum grand symphony to the sparkling cabaret ending, nothing but laughter. Silly, stupid laughter. Stupid, stupid laughter.
Escola says its their stupidest play. Pinkleton shares he has a huge hunger for deep stupidity. Jesse Green, the theatre critic for the New York Times, wrote: “Oh, Mary! may be silly, campy, even pointless, but ‘stupid,’ I think not. Rather, the play…is one of the best crafted and most exactingly directed Broadway comedies in years.”
The more I think about Oh, Mary!, I agree with Green. It’s neither skit nor sketch nor shtick — an uncontained comedy that never pauses enough to breathe. The last show that made me laugh so hard was Mel Brooks’s The Producers, and I’m reminded of the start of the song “Where Did We Go Right?”:
[MAX, spoken]
Look at these reviews! “A satiric masterpiece.”
[LEO, spoken]
No way out.
[MAX, spoken]
“A surprise smash!”
[LEO, spoken]
No way out.
[MAX, spoken]
“It was shocking, outrageous, insulting…and I loved every minute of it.”
Amen and amen!
Brooks, Mel. “Where Did We Go Right?” from The Producers.
Green, Jesse. “What Makes ‘Oh, Mary!’ One of the Best Summer Comedies in Years.” New York Times, July 11, 2024.
McHenry, Jackson. “Oh, Mary! The Play Was Hilarious, Mrs. Lincoln.” Vulture, February 8, 2024.
