Review: Believe the hype about Broadway's gloriously irreverent 'Oh, Mary!'

NEW YORK − A demented new Broadway star is born.

Her name is Mary Todd Lincoln, a hard-boozing, curl-bouncing chanteuse known for her short legs and long medleys. She’s the spiky center of Cole Escola’s delightfully dumb new play “Oh, Mary!”, which opened July 11 at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre after a sold-out run downtown, which drew megawatt fans such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Timothée Chalamet and Steven Spielberg.

Mary (Escola) is cloistered at home by husband Abraham (Conrad Ricamora), a cantankerously closeted gay man, who would rather she chug paint thinner than return to her one great love: cabaret. “How would it look for the first lady of the United States to be flitting about a stage right now in the ruins of war?” he barks. (“How would it look?” Mary counters. “Sensational!”)

Briskly directed by Sam Pinkleton and unfolding over 80 deliriously funny minutes, “Oh, Mary!” has only gotten sharper since its scrappy off-Broadway mounting last spring. A return visit magnifies the sensational work of the supporting players in Mary’s twisted melodrama: Bianca Leigh as her put-upon punching bag Louise, whose insatiable lust for ice cream leads to one of the play’s most uproarious one-liners; and James Scully as Mary’s dashing acting coach with undisclosed desires of his own.

Ricamora, the earnest heart of last season’s “Here Lies Love,” plays the president as a sort of venom-spewing Henny Youngman, whose contempt for Mary is surpassed only by his carnal longing for Simon (Tony Macht), his sheepish assistant. By the time Abe makes his fateful trip to Ford’s Theatre, the entire audience is gleefully cheering against him.

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But none wrest the spotlight from Escola, who, at the risk of hyperbole, gives one of the greatest comedic performances of the century so far. Watching them is akin to witnessing Nathan Lane in “The Producers,” Beth Leavel in “The Drowsy Chaperone” or Michael Jeter in “Grand Hotel” – a tour de force so singularly strange, and so vivaciously embodied, that it feels like an event.

Escola, a nonbinary actor best known for Hulu's “Difficult People” and truTV's “At Home with Amy Sedaris,” brings darting eyes and outrageous physicality to the role. Their petulant Mary is like Joan Crawford on horse tranquilizers: one moment pouting and glaring from the corner of the Oval Office; the next, firing off filthy zingers as they tumble and barrel across the room, sniffing out hidden liquor bottles like a snockered Bugs Bunny. Mary is illiterate, delusional and somehow oblivious to the entire Civil War. (When Abe laments that the entire South hates him, Mary asks dumbfounded, “The south of what?”)

But in all the character’s feverish mania, Escola still manages to find moments of genuine pathos as Mary resigns herself to no more “great days,” settling instead for “a lifetime of steady, just fine” ones. There’s a childlike desperation and need for attention that makes the ribald first lady ultimately rootable. And when she does finally showcase her madcap medleys – styled in Holly Pierson’s sublime costumes and Leah J. Loukas’ instantly iconic wig – it’s transcendent.

Moving to Broadway after months of breathless hype from critics and theatergoers, it would be easy to turn up one’s nose at the show, grumbling that something was “lost” in the transfer. But that is certainly not the case here: For any fans of “elegant stories told through song,” Escola’s brilliant lunacy is the real deal. Like the play’s unhinged diva, “Oh, Mary!” will not and should not be ignored.

"Oh, Mary!" is now playing through Sept. 15 at New York's Lyceum Theatre (149 W. 45th St.).