July 11, 2024 goes down as a historic night on Broadway.
“Oh, Mary!” opened Thursday at the Lyceum Theatre after a successful run Off Broadway, and Cole Escola, the show’s author and star, achieves what such crossdressing trailblazers as Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch were never allowed to do. Busch’s one shot at Broadway came in 2000 when his comedy “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife” opened, starring Linda Lavin and followed by Valerie Harper and Rhea Perlman in the lead role. No plans were ever made for Busch to impersonate the character of Upper West Side matron Marjorie Taub, despite his having played the female lead in more than a dozen plays he wrote before and since “Allergist’s Wife.” Is the difference quality? I think not. Busch’s “Red Scare on Sunset” and “The Divine Sister,” as well Ludlam’s “Irma Vep” and “Galas,” could have played Broadway with their respective creators on stage in drag. All they lacked were producers willing to take the plunge.
What a difference a few intrepid money people make!
“Oh, Mary!” plays even better on Broadway than it did downtown at the Lucille Lortel Theater earlier this year. Experiencing this comedy with a few hundred more theatergoers takes the laughter from boisterous to atomic and the effect is absolutely radioactive. Plot-wise, it continues to be best to write as little as possible. There are outrageous twists and turns in the story that genuinely shock an audience into delayed convulsions of laughter. Let’s just say that Escola has somehow managed to turn the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln into an inspired, rollicking comedy.
From the moment Escola’s Mary Todd Lincoln enters the Oval Office (terrific sets by Dots), it’s like watching the last reel of “The Valley of the Dolls” with Patty Duke in full drunken fury. Escola not only brilliantly overacts from the get-go, this performer possesses Duke’s doll-like features, and wig designer Leah J. Loukas has concocted a set of long coiled curls that’s a dead-ringer for what Duke wears in the “Dolls” scene that replicates Judy Garland getting fired from “Annie Get Your Gun.” (That sentence is a test: if you don’t get it, maybe “Oh, Mary!” is not for you.)
In the world of camp, heterosexuality is the biggest joke of all. Except in “Oh, Mary!” This play lampoons gay sex even more than the straight variety. On any other stage, Escola’s Mary would steal the show, but fellow actors Conrad Ricamora and James Scully often snatch it right back. The show’s funniest scene (arguably) belongs not to Escola but Ricamora (“Mary’s husband”) and Scully (“Mary’s teacher”) when they launch into a dish session that roasts poor Mary alive.
Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht round out the terrific cast, which Sam Pinkleton directs with all the subtlety of a wild man wielding a buzzsaw.
