Marc Malkin Senior Editor, Culture and Events Cole Escola, the 37-year-old star and writer of the hit Off Broadway farce ”Oh, Mary!,” isn’t letting fame get to their head. (Escola identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.) When they’re a few minutes late to a Zoom interview for Just for Variety, they explain it’s because they were busy installing an air conditioner in their apartment. “Yes, I put it in myself,” Escola says. “I’m going to Broadway, but I’m still a person.” A person who has become the toast of New York theater circles, Escola’s outrageous drag performance centers on boozy, sex-starved wannabe cabaret singer Mary Todd Lincoln, who is cooped up in the White House as her boy-crazy husband, Abraham Lincoln, is trying to end the Civil War. “Oh, Mary!” was the hottest ticket in town throughout its five-month run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
The play isn’t revisionist history — it’s completely made-up history. However, I admit to Escola that I googled Honest Abe’s widow after seeing the show because I wasn’t sure what might be real. “Oh, wow.
I hadn’t even considered that,” says Escola, whom television audiences know from “Difficult People,” “Search Party” and “At Home With Amy Sedaris.” ”That I might actually be tricking people into thinking like, ‘Wait a minute — did she want to be a cabaret star?’ Oh, God!” Next up, Escola wants to get back to writing. “I would love to write something that I’m not in and just be in a rehearsal room as a writer,” they say. “But I love theater.
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