As Burgess prepares to step in to the hit Broadway comedy, he thinks he should have “spent more time at the gym.”
“Oh!” Tituss Burgess said, the curls of his Mary Todd Lincoln wig bobbing as he spoke. “I need kneepads.”
Fully in costume, wearing the wig and a bell-shaped black dress, Burgess was about to rehearse Cole Escola’s hit comedy “Oh, Mary!” onstage at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, just days before stepping into the starring role on Tuesday.
And, yes, he really did need those kneepads. When Escola played Mary Todd, they channeled their sprung-coil energy into a performance of relentless hilarity and chaos. Burgess’s take on the role is no less physical; if anything, he is upping the ante with the cartoonish expressions and belted high notes fans know from his earlier Broadway appearances and shows like “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”
Burgess’s turn in the play, a demented fantasia of Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated and thwarted “rather well-known niche cabaret legend,” will run through April 6. After that, Escola will return to the part.
When they do, it will be with a fantasy having come true. Last May, Escola was a guest on Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers’s podcast “Las Culturistas,” and said that they “would love for someone else to play Mary Todd” before adding, “My dream is Tituss Burgess.”
Yang and Rogers let out an exclamation just short of a gay gasp, and Rogers said, “That would be fab.” Escola joked that they were worried Burgess would be “too good,” but also couldn’t help but imagine him in the show’s famous curly wig.
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Source: Theater - nytimes.com
