Oh, Mary! (Play)

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares114 Views

    ‘Oh, Mary!,’ a Surprise Downtown Hit, Will Play Broadway This Summer

    by

    Cole Escola’s madcap comedy about the former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln will begin performances in June.“Oh, Mary!,” an outrageously madcap comedy that imagines the former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln as an oft-inebriated chanteuse-wannabe, will transfer to Broadway this summer after becoming a surprise hit downtown.The show, which is gleefully tasteless and also ahistorical, is the brainchild of Cole Escola, an alt-cabaret performer who built a cult following with a series of YouTube sketches and reached a wider audience with a role on Hulu’s “Difficult People.”The Broadway run is scheduled to begin previews June 26 and to open July 11 at the Lyceum Theater. It is scheduled to run until Sept. 15.“Oh, Mary!” began its life in January at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village. That commercial Off Broadway run has been extended twice and is scheduled to end May 12. The run has been sold out, and has attracted a stream of celebrities, including Bowen Yang, Timothée Chalamet, Amy Schumer and Jessica Lange; one night Steven Spielberg, who directed the 2012 film “Lincoln,” showed up with Sally Field (who played Mary Todd Lincoln in the film) and Tony Kushner (who wrote the screenplay).“Oh, Mary!” was written by Escola and is directed by Sam Pinkleton. The Broadway run will feature the same cast as the Off Broadway run, including Escola as Mary Todd Lincoln and Conrad Ricamora as Abraham Lincoln; it is being produced by Kevin McCollum, Lucas McMahon, Mike Lavoie and Carlee Briglia. More

    More stories

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      There’s a Bright Spot in New York Theater. It’s Not Where You Think.

      by

      Commercial Off Broadway, a long-dormant sector of the city’s theater economy, is having a banner season. But can it last?Broadway is struggling through a postpandemic funk, squeezed between higher production costs and lower audience numbers just as a bevy of new shows set sail into those fierce headwinds. At the same time, New York’s Off Broadway nonprofits, long essential seedbeds for many of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights, are shedding staff, programming and even real estate.But there is an unexpected bright spot this season. Commercial Off Broadway, a small sector of New York’s theatrical economy and one that has for years been somewhere between difficult and dormant, is back in business.“Oh, Mary!,” a madcap comedy that imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a daffy alcoholic, is selling out nightly at a 295-seat theater in the West Village, and is likely to transfer to Broadway this summer. Eddie Izzard’s solo “Hamlet” did well enough at a 199-seat theater in Greenwich Village that it relocated to a 349-seat house in the East Village, and next is planning runs in Chicago and London.A commercial revival of “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” an early John Patrick Shanley play about two misfits who meet at a Bronx bar, had a profitable run downtown this season thanks to its two stars, Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott. A new play, “Job,” featuring two “Succession” alums, rode word-of-mouth to profitability, and is also exploring a Broadway transfer.Ticket seekers waited in the cancellation line before a recent performance of “Oh, Mary!” at the Lucille Lortel Theater.Clark Hodgin for The New York TimesAnd a pair of good-time musicals, “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Titanique,” have settled in for open-ended Off Broadway runs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Review: ‘Oh, Mary!’ Turns an Unhinged Bit Into Real Theater

      by

      Cole Escola’s play, which imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated cabaret singer, surprisingly pulls off stretching a stupid joke to its extremes.“For God’s sake, Mary!” Abraham Lincoln says to his wife in “Oh, Mary!,” Cole Escola’s unhinged historical fantasia that imagines its protagonist as an alcoholic cabaret singer married to a gay guy. “How would it look for the first lady of the United States to be flitting around a stage right now in the ruins of war!”“How would it look?!” she responds. “Sensational!”It’s a moment reminiscent of Escola’s early YouTube humor, like in the sketch “Bernadette Peters Does Her Taxes.” An accountant exasperatingly asks for a ballpark figure, and Escola’s Bernadette, wiggling like a charmed snake with their hands on their hips, asks, “Is this a ballpark figure?”So stupid. So campy. So unexpected. And yes, like Mrs. Lincoln, even sensational.There’s little else in New York theater right now quite as surprising as “Oh, Mary!” Written by and starring Escola, it’s a bit taken to an 80-minute extreme that’s silly, nasty, tasteless and, in the end, good theater — the kind of show that will leave you gagging, both in the sense that you’ll be losing your mind with joy, and that you might just be grossed out.Escola’s humor is tailored like a Bernadette Peters concert gown to New York gays who were brought up on a diet of alt-cabaret and “Strangers With Candy.” Mary Todd Lincoln would scowl comfortably alongside the Hollywood starlets of Charles Busch and the manic guests of “At Home With Amy Sedaris.”To this lineage Escola adds a sensibility that’s queer and crass; you often get the impression that their ideas start with a wig in search of a story, inspired by tropes from pop culture — mainly, vintage TV and commercials that begin with “I’m a mom.” Out come characters like Donna Germaine, the sweetly hapless real estate agent of “Pee Pee Manor,” and Fifi, the saloon singer of “Our Home Out West,” a parody of 1970s Christmas specials.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Mary Todd Lincoln, Thwarted Cabaret Star? That’s Cole Escola’s Take.

      by

      “Oh, Mary!,” which follows a boozing, romance-starved first lady, is the latest entertainment about the Lincolns, illustrating their staying power as irreverent genre figures.It’s hard to pin down the moment in “Oh, Mary!,” a comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln, that will send Lincoln scholars and purists into apoplexy. It could be when the first lady disastrously auditions for a role in “Our American Cousin,” the play at which John Wilkes Booth would later shoot her husband on April 14, 1865. Or when the deeply closeted Lincoln is orally pleasured at his desk. Maybe the puke-drinking scene?There have been walkouts.“I’ve seen people at the box office who seem to think this is really a play about Abraham Lincoln, and I feel a little bad, but it’s also funny,” Cole Escola, the show’s writer and star, said in a recent phone interview.“Oh, Mary!”: It sounds like a catty dramedy set at a pre-Stonewall gay bar, or maybe an alt-cabaret tribute to Jackée Harry and her chirpy signature greeting on the 1980s sitcom “227.”“Oh, Mary!,” of course, is not about gay bars or Jackée Harry, but it is just as camp: The former first lady is presented as a bubbleheaded alcoholic, and she is the latest put-upon woman to enchant Escola. (The show opens on Thursday and continues through March 24 at Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theater.)Far from being a student of the Lincolns, Escola, who is nonbinary, said they only started reading “a few cursory” things about Mary Todd Lincoln about three weeks ago.“I wish I had done any research,” they said. “But I wanted to write the show for an audience who had the same third-grade understanding that I do.” (“I just wanted to wear the costume,” Escola deadpan confesses in an Instagram video.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More