After the curtain call of “Oh, Mary!,” star and playwright Cole Escola said that creating the absurd, queer play was a lot like trying to convince your doctor that you have a tumor.
“When you have an idea, it’s really embarrassing to care about something that doesn’t exist yet. It’s really vulnerable. It’s like trying to convince your doctor that you have a tumor based on nothing except you just feel like you probably have one,” Escola said on stage after the Broadway debut of “Oh, Mary!” Thursday night. “You go to your doctor and the doctor’s like, ‘What are the symptoms?’ and you’re like, ‘I don’t have any. I’m just pretty sure there’s a tumor.’ Then they run the tests and there’s no tumor, you go back again and there’s no tumor, then you go back again and there’s a cyst but they drain it.”
Looking back at the “Oh, Mary!” cast, who all made the jump from off-Broadway in the West Village to Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre, Escola, dressed as Mary Todd Lincoln, thanked the raucous, opening-night crowd in their hilariously witty fashion.
“Then you meet people who are not doctors but they are convinced, ‘Yes, that is a tumor. In fact, we also think we have tumors. Let’s cut ourselves open right now and put it out for the world to see,’” Escola added. “Everyone back here has really committed to cutting themselves open and pouring their tumors out on stage. The point I’m trying to make is…you all thought the doctor was a man, didn’t you?”
The crowd was in stitches at Escola’s performance all night. In the 80-minute show, they star as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, who turns to booze and acting lessons while she’s cooped up in the White House. Conrad Ricamora plays Abraham Lincoln, who is dealing with the stress of the Civil War in some very un-Honest Abe ways (and a secret male lover or two). “Oh, Mary!” turns the Lincolns’ history on its head, while also giving a twist to John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of the 16th president.
“Broadway needs this show. Everything now seems like it’s existing IP, and this is one of the only things that is truly an original piece that came from the mind of an idiot named Cole Escola,” Ricamora told Variety on the red carpet before the performance. “There are so many stupid gems to choose from.”
Just like the Off-Broadway run of “Oh, Mary!” — which counted Steven Spielberg, Pedro Pascal, Melissa McCarthy, Sally Field and more A-listers among its guests — the Broadway premiere saw Matthew Broderick, Patti LuPone, Amy Sedaris, Julio Torres, Rebecca Hall, Ruth Negga, Maude Apatow, Jim Rash, Laura Bernanti and more on opening night.
The cast celebrated the opening with a party at The Eagle, a popular gay leather bar in Chelsea. Ricamora donned a leather leash on the red carpet, and Escola joked that they were going to keep their curtain call speech short “because we all want to get to the Eagle.” The bar served three types of mini hot dogs, grilled cheese, salmon onigiri and more to guests, who mingled among posters of Escola’s Mary and leather-clad bikers.
Conrad Ricamora at the after-party for “Oh, Mary!” opening night.
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“I got this together in terms of how Abraham wants to dress and how he feels he has to dress,” Ricamora explained. “The tuxedo is how he feels he has to dress to be presidential and formal, but the shorts, sock garters, collar and leather leash are how he really wants to be. It’s a form of him wanting to bust out.”
Escola ended their curtain call speech with a couple more jokes, but stopped short of choking up on stage.
“I want to thank all of these people here, most of whom I have never met. And there’s lot of people backstage, some already at The Eagle,” they said. “I just want to thank everyone for treating this as if it were the fucking ‘Cherry Orchard.’ It means a lot to me, and tonight means a lot to me…I’m just losing my voice, I’m not crying. Thank you all so much for coming, and have a good night. I love you all.”
And in a coincidence of timing, just a day before the opening, the first trailer premiered for “Lover of Men,” a new documentary that explores theories that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed romantic relationships with men.
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