Oh, Mary!: Cole Escola Gives Mary Todd Her Moment in Debut Romp

For Halloween my senior year of high school, I went dressed as Sexy Abraham Lincoln. Brimming with newfound personal freedom and spunk, the idea came to me in small part because I kind of look like him and in large part because, well, it’s really fucking funny. As Cole Escola, the brilliant mind behind the hit new original play, Oh, Mary!, can attest, there’s a humor in taking something as ubiquitous as our second-most famous president and turning convention completely on its head. An 80-minute, Off Broadway romp, Oh, Mary! follows the outrageous and fantastical life of a reimagined Mary Todd, now a disgusting and repugnant drunk who dreams of a life on the stage. The show’s irreverence comes from witnessing someone we once thought of as stuffy and stiff, instead as raunchy, raucous, and quite frankly, uproarious. The show’s striking hilarity and subversion is the main reason why people have flocked to go see it. Or—maybe—because Escola is just so goddamn good. 

Off Broadway has benefited from a bit of a resurgence in recent years. Titanique the Musical continues to draw crowds as a satirical account of the Titanic shipwreck story, sung-told by Celine Dion herself; Kate Berlant’s Kate, sends up the one-woman show genre, á la Fleabag; and Get On Your Knees, is a coming-of-age narrative about giving head. The commercial success of these productions acts as a harbinger of Oh, Mary!’s marked critical accent, which is skyrocketing Escola from behind the fog of indie fandom and well into the mainstream. 

It’s the hottest ticket in town, with nearly every performance selling out since its opening and the run already extended two times at this point. As a darling of the alt-comedy scene, Cole Escola brings their peers along as collaborators in the production, making the palpable electricity on stage even more scintillating as the cast’s chemistry enlivens the words on the page. A number of the performers share credits from various projects, including Conrad Ricamora, who plays Mary’s Husband, and Assistant Director Peter Smith, both of whom worked on Hulu’s Fire Island. Smith, it’s worth noting, understudied the role of Mary’s Husband’s little plaything in the performance I attended. (Oh, yeah. In this ahistorical retelling, President Lincoln is compulsively queer.) Although Oh, Mary! features a cast most well-known to the alt-comedy audience, it expertly straddles the line between hidden-gem and cultural phenomenon. Hollywood elites by the likes of Sally Field, Blythe Danner, and Steven Spielberg have all come to witness the delightful belligerence of our former First Lady in her gory glory. Laughter, after all, is the great equalizer. 

Prior to the curtain’s rise, audience members are thrust into the wacky, weird and wonderful world of Escola and their Civil War-era fever dream that is Oh Mary! Resting on an easel in the lobby of the Lucille Lortel Theater in Manhattan’s West Village sits a painting of Escola dressed in a light blue gown. The hallway leading to the house is lined with a fake retrospective of Escola’s career in the arts. One such homage includes a photo from Escola’s fictional turn in The Grapes of Wrath, with a caption that reads: “Of course this is a great American story. But as an LGBTQIA artist, I’m painfully aware that Steinbeck’s narrow vision of the Dust Bowl completely lacks an honest representation of queer nightlife. I’m so glad I got to correct that.” Before even the first line of dialogue is spoken, Escola’s style of comedy is on vivid display.

Further into the theater, another portrait greets guests as they make their way to their seats: a painting of the performance space’s eponymous patron, Lucille Lortel. This is perhaps not a coincidence, but a nod to all that Lortel and Escola’s Mary Todd have in common: Lortel was responsible for producing the only Off-Broadway show to ever win a Tony Award, and Mary, in this offbeat alternative history, is a “niche” cabaret singer known for her “short legs and long ballads.” Besides their shared devotion to the arts, both had the kibosh put on their careers by their husbands. 

In this version of American history, Mary Todd Lincoln is brazen and crass, a diva whose hopes and dreams have been squandered by her husband’s political life. There’s no way to predict what she’ll do next: she’s quick to lift her black hoop skirt, revealing her heart-covered pantaloons, or drink the paint thinner used in her painting lesson, as a substitute for a cocktail. Desperate for a buzz, she may even down the liquid once again, after her husband makes her vomit the contents of her stomach into a bucket. As disgusting as it may seem, what we’re watching is a woman dying “to feel something,” in a marriage to a man who sees her as a burden. “I’m so bored. Nothing ever happens around here,” Mary declares while the country is in the midst of war. In order to keep his wife out of trouble and from ruining his name, Lincoln, who’s officially billed as “Mary’s Husband,” hires an acting coach who sweeps Mary off her feet and promises her a life of stardom.

What most people know about Mrs. Lincoln is limited only to the prism of her husband. In Escola’s debut play, however, we meet a drunk, petulant woman left to roam the halls of the White House, yearning to return to the cabaret: Her name was Mary, and she was a showgirl. 

A story of passion, pain and repression, Oh, Mary! very well may be Cole Escola’s magnum opus, but I have a feeling this is just the beginning for the talented multihyphenate. Escola’s acting sensibilities, including their gargantuan physicality and command of the stage, coupled with their writing prowess lend themselves to comedic gold. Audiences can’t get enough, nor can they catch their breath. Much like Mary, in the case of Escola, we’re witnessing a star in the making. 

Felicia Reich is an entertainment writer and culture reporter. She lives in Brooklyn with her collection of decorative pillows and insatiable curiosity. Follow her on Instagram @feliciamnqreich or around Whole Foods at a tasteful distance.