Oh, Mary!
Overall Grade: A for Absurdity
What do you get when you take Mary Todd Lincoln, throw out the history books, lace up her corset, hand her a martini, and toss her onstage in a cabaret fantasy nightmare of political farce and gay melodrama? You get Oh, Mary!—the camp masterpiece currently melting faces (and norms) at the Lyceum Theatre.
Written by and originally starring Cole Escola, the play enjoyed a viral Off-Broadway run before transferring to Broadway in 2024. By the time I saw it during a limited three-week engagement, the baton had been passed to none other than Tituss Burgess, and let me tell you: Titus did not just play Mary Todd Lincoln—he devoured her whole and tap-danced on the ruins.
Burgess, best known for his Emmy-nominated role as Titus Andromedon in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, brought his signature vocal prowess, physical comedy, and larger-than-life flamboyance to the role. His Mary is a tyrannical alcoholic, raging through the White House with a slurred soliloquy and a dream: to be a cabaret star. Never mind the Civil War. Never mind the death toll. She has a show to do.
Set in the final days before Lincoln’s assassination, the plot is as ludicrous as it is inspired. Mary—trapped in a domestic prison where her husband (also closeted and, in this version, receiving Oval Office... favors from a randy sergeant) treats her more like a houseplant than a partner—finds a sliver of meaning in the lowbrow art of cabaret. Her chaperone disapproves. Her husband scoffs. So naturally, he hires an acting coach to “distract” her, which turns out to be none other than John Wilkes Booth, reimagined here as a smoldering, morally ambiguous Shakespearean with a secret of his own.
When Mary overhears Booth and Lincoln having an affair, she snaps. But instead of following history’s well-tread path of assassination by Booth, the show takes a turn so gloriously unexpected and grotesquely fabulous that I won’t spoil it—except to say, it ends not with a bang but with a belting.
The show caps off in full cabaret mode: sequins, piano, whiskey-soaked tomfoolery, and Titus Burgess performing a nonsense-laden musical finale with such bravado you feel like you've wandered into Broadway’s most expensive drag brunch. And frankly? You have.
Let’s be clear: this is not a play so much as a fever dream performed in iambic drunkenness. Clocking in at just 80 minutes, it’s theater as a riotous drag spectacle—Broadway’s biggest gay bar, outfitted with presidential wigs and historical blasphemy.
Verdict: If you’re looking for historical insight, go see Hamilton. If you want to scream-laugh through a flaming wreck of American mythmaking, shot through with queer joy and unhinged rage? Oh, Mary! is your emancipation.