The Broadway comedy Oh, Mary! is an intentionally ridiculous reimagining of first lady Mary Todd Lincoln. It portrays her as having become addicted to alcohol, not because of the Civil War, but because she's desperately yearning to become a cabaret star. For playwright and actor Cole Escola, the show is deeply personal.
"This play is about a woman with a dream that no one around her understands. A dream that the whole world is telling her is stupid and doesn't make any sense. And I feel that way," Escola says.
A native of Clatskanie, Ore., Escola describes their hometown as "1,500 people, lots of trees, and nothing much else." Escola never imagined they'd one day star in a Broadway show.
"I was like, 'Oh, OK, so if I want to be an actor, I'm going to have to go to school and learn how to move less gay and talk less gay and play these boring boy parts,' " they say. "And I was, like, I don't think I want to do that."
After moving to New York City about 20 years ago, Escola became involved in the city's cabaret and alt comedy scenes. One day, while walking around Lincoln Center, their mind drifted towards the president's widow.
"I had the thought: What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't such a bad thing for Mary Todd?" Escola says. "And it was just an idea that tickled me so much."
Escola began to imagine a "second chapter" for Mary Todd Lincoln, an idea that evolved slowly over 12 years. In 2024, Oh, Mary!, starring Escola in the title role, debuted off-Broadway. It's since transferred to Broadway, where it received five Tony nominations.
"I can't believe that my big break came from doing what I wanted to do, like not compromising," they say. "June 21st is my last performance, and I'm slowly starting to wrap my head around the whole experience and I will say I've been crying a lot."
Interview highlights
On being surprised by the success of Oh, Mary!'
I always assumed that if I ever had any sort of "real career success" I would be the gay best friend on a sitcom. ... I mean, who would ever think, like, "OK, Cole, a play where you're in drag playing Mary Todd Lincoln as a wannabe cabaret star — I think you should pursue this as a big Broadway hit." I mean, absolutely not. We were, like, over the moon that we got eight weeks at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. And I still think that's really cool. I can't believe that we did get that. But I still can't really wrap my head around it.
On handing off Oh, Mary! to Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess to star in the show for limited engagements in 2025 while Escola took a break from the role
I was scared. I was afraid for all the reasons. Like, what if they don't quite get it? I was just scared because I didn't know what to expect. And then the way that they both embraced this role, like, it was their dream role — is so satisfying. … As someone who was always begging their friends to like, "Please be in my movie," like, "Can we please make this little movie? Can we please put a skit together for the talent show?" To now have two of my favorite actors in the world, Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess, who are both so deep and so funny, take on a role and love it as if it was given to them by Mike Nichols or George Cukor, it's like I can't think of a better feeling.
On being inspired by their grandma's stories
She told this story a lot about her 10th birthday when she found out her dad had a stroke and died, working in some sort of mine in Canada. And then there was also a story about how she really couldn't see, her eyesight was really bad, but her family couldn't afford glasses. But then one day a doctor came to town and gave her a free pair of glasses. These aren't great stories. It was always the way that she told them and the details and the way she disappeared into the story in the telling of it. … And just the seriousness. I'm laughing because I'm just now realizing it was a cabaret act. I'd never put that together. That was my first exposure to cabaret was hearing my grandmother with Alzheimer's retell me stories about her childhood in Alberta, Canada.
On getting started in community theater
My first professional acting job was in a production of Grapes of Wrath. I played Winfield Joad and it was in a town 30 miles away from Clatskanie, where I grew up. And during that time, my grandmother lived in a nursing home, and it was close, and it was much, much, closer to the theater than where I lived, so some nights after rehearsals I would stay over at her nursing home. … I wasn't sure that I was allowed to be there. Like, I knew I could visit. I was pretty sure I wasn't allowed to spend the night, but I did anyway, and it was weird. I was lying to so many adults just so that I could be in this play. I think I lied to my mom, and I told her like, "Oh no, the play feeds us." And meanwhile, I wasn't eating, because I knew if I said, "I need money for food," she would say, "Well, we can't do that. I'm sorry, you can't do this play." And I lied to the adults in the play saying, like, "Oh yeah, I can stay with my grandma in the nursing home so I can [stay] late at rehearsal."
On making comedy videos when they first got to New York
I was miserable. I was truly suicidal. I was bulimic. And I was walking around near Bloomingdales, and I remember I was having these thoughts about not wanting to be alive. And then I started having those thoughts, of a character's voice, a voice not unlike my grandma and her friends. And I came up with this character, Joyce Conner, who was a really sort of cheery, innocuous middle-aged woman who was just kept having to put off her suicide because so many things kept popping up over the weekend. For some reason that was, like, this huge release valve. Like, it both allowed me to feel what I was feeling, but also relieved me from feeling burdened by what I was feeling.
Lauren Krenzel and Anna Bauman produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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