‘Oh, Mary!’ Theater Review: Comedy Genius Cole Escola Serves Revisionist American History as Riotous Queer Silliness

Conrad Ricamora (left) and Cole Escola in ‘Oh, Mary!’

Emilio Madrid

Queer alt-comedy in the vein of Oh, Mary! seldom makes it to Broadway, so the arrival of Cole Escola’s downtown theatrical sensation at the Lyceum is cause for Big Gay Jubilation. But if that makes this blissfully absurd rethink of a key moment in American history sound like niche entertainment showing up late for Pride Month, don’t be deceived. It’s hard to imagine anyone with a sense of humor not joining the infectious laughter sparked by Escola’s gut-bustingly funny antics, reimagining Mary Todd Lincoln as an alcoholic cabaret artiste manqué, married to a president struggling to keep the closet door shut.

Escola has been a scene-stealer on TV series including Difficult People, Search Party and At Home With Amy Sedaris (there are no words for how much I miss that show), frequently doubling as a writer. The nonbinary actor has said in interviews that since theater wasn’t exactly throwing open its doors to them, they decided to write their own vehicle.

Hence this radically silly farce, which transforms a misunderstood first lady into a magnificent — and monstrous — comic creation while shedding irreverent new light on the man she regrets marrying, who is trying to run the country while doing everything possible to keep her off the booze and out of the spotlight.

Escola’s performance in the title role — costumed primarily in a black taffeta hoop-skirt gown and a ridiculous wig of ringlets topped by a severe bun — is a master class in razor-sharp comic timing, shady double takes and giddy physical comedy.

In the wake of the 2019 Met Gala, where that year’s theme was “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” there was much discussion of the specific meaning of camp and of how thoroughly most attendees had misunderstood the assignment. Well, Oh, Mary! is about as precise an example of camp as you could wish for, from a title that has been either a term of endearment or of bitchy dismissal for gay men for decades through a female lead whose scheming self-interest recalls the vixens of midcentury Hollywood melodrama. Minus the intelligence.

Escola has described their take on the protagonist as “through the lens of an idiot,” and indeed, one of the most hilarious aspects of this petulant, tantrum-throwing, cruel, sarcastic and blithely uneducated Mary Todd Lincoln is how profoundly incurious she is about the concerns of the extremely harried Abraham (Conrad Ricamora). She’s kind of the prototype Melania, only with humor.

This exchange, when Mary implores her husband to let her go back to doing cabaret, sums up her involvement in the affairs of the nation:

Abraham: No! It’s inappropriate! We’re at war!
Mary: With who?
Abraham: The South!
Mary: Of what?

Briskly staged by Sam Pinkleton on an amusingly chintzy set you might almost expect to have seen at Ford’s Theatre back in the 1800s — with two sets of double doors to enable dramatic entrances and exits — the play fictionalizes events in the days leading up to Lincoln’s assassination. While the personages involved are true to history, the details are pure invention. Escola freely owns up to doing pretty much zero historical research, instead saying of the play in a THR interview: “It’s just tailor-made to all my favorite things: genre, melodrama, vulgar, stupid.”

When Mary resorts to drinking paint thinner after Abraham confiscates her whiskey, the president realizes that prim Louise (Bianca Leigh), his wife’s detested chaperone, will never be able to control her. As a compromise, he suggests that Mary put aside her cabaret aspirations to work in the legitimate theater, hiring a handsome acting teacher (James Scully) to keep her occupied. She sees through this as a ploy to ensure she remains sober and out of sight. But the president is sufficiently enraged to insist: “Take the acting lessons, you fucking moron.”

Much butchery of Shakespeare ensues, along with romantic entanglements and escape plots. Through a mix of cunning, shamelessness and dumb luck, Mary somehow stumbles her way forward to live her best life, thumbing her nose at patriarchal propriety.

The demented reincarnation of the first lady is matched by the outrageous queering of Honest Abe, whose sexuality has often been a subject of historical speculation. His insistence that no one must know the couple met in a cabaret bar where Mary was performing one of her “madcap medleys” says plenty. “I was young and confused,” he admits. The president’s means of letting off steam with his cadet assistant Simon (Tony Macht) gets more explicit, as do some messy threads left dangling from a previous fling.

Ricamora is a hoot as Abraham, bellowing with rage, shuddering with disgust or praying to God to help tame his sexual urges, bargaining that he’ll give all that up after just one more time. His ruthlessness when he turns on his former lover is priceless: “I’m the president of the United States. Who the hell are you? A pretty face and a fat ass.”

Scully also gets some choice moments, particularly once the teacher’s identity is revealed, instantly upping the stakes. Leigh and Macht, cleverly double-cast, also fit right into a tight-knit, loony ensemble that honors a rich tradition of gleefully over-the-top alternative New York theater, from Charles Ludlam to Charles Busch. There’s even a trace of the repertory company spirit of The Carol Burnett Show, although the material’s exuberant profanity would have made network execs’ heads explode.

In its original extended run at the Lortel Theatre earlier this year, Oh, Mary! drew packed houses that one night included Steven Spielberg, Sally Field and Tony Kushner, respectively the director, co-star and screenwriter of Lincoln. The widely circulated backstage photo of the group with Escola in Mary drag no doubt helped spread the word that this was no ordinary lark. The playwright might describe it as stupid, but any comedy that liberates audiences from the despair of the current political climate with 80 minutes of almost uninterrupted laughter is a work of genius.

Venue: Lyceum Theatre, New York
Cast: Cole Escola, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully, Bianca Leigh, Tony Macht
Playwright: Cole Escola
Director: Sam Pinkleton
Set designer: Dots
Costume designer: Holly Pierson
Lighting designer: Cha See
Sound designers: Daniel Kluger, Drew Levy
Music: Daniel Kluger
Presented by Kevin McCollum & Lucas McMahon, Mike Lavoie & Carlee Briglia