‘Oh, Mary!’ Review: Cole Escola’s Super-Gay Broadway Comedy Is a Smartly Stupid Riot
variety.comChristian Lewis Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!” is the best kind of stupid: a broad, wildly funny comedy that spits in the face of American history and uses it as joke fodder for some endlessly campy humor.
In theory, the play is about Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to her husband’s assassination, but it has almost no interest in the Civil War or politics.
Instead, it’s primarily about Mary’s burning desire to perform. Escola’s version of the famous first lady describes herself as a “well-known niche cabaret legend” beloved for her “short legs and long medleys.” Her husband, though, looks down on cabaret and says it would be a bad look for the first lady to be on the stage (particularly amidst a war).
Much is made of the difference between cabaret and what is called (especially in the 19th century, when the play is ostensibly set) the “legitimate theater.” One of the key distinctions, at least according to a character who mansplains it to Mary, is the presence of subtext: While theater is founded upon it, cabaret supposedly lacks it. “Oh, Mary!” questions that very distinction, often in quiet, dare we say subtextual, ways.
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