Latest news with #Mary!'
CNN
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Jinkx Monsoon to take over lead role on Broadway's ‘Oh, Mary!'; says she's ‘lucky to be alive at same time as' Cole Escola
Mary Todd Lincoln, meet Jinkx Monsoon. Monsoon, best known for her winning runs on both 'RuPaul's Drag Race' and 'Drag Race All Stars,' announced on Wednesday that she is set to take over the lead role in the wild, Tony-winning historical spoof 'Oh, Mary!' on Broadway this summer. Current star Cole Escola won the Tony Award for best lead actor in a play for the role earlier this month, and is also credited with writing the play. In Monsoon's announcement, she called Escola a 'genius' and said the play was 'one of the best things I've ever seen.' 'Cole is easily the funniest person alive and I'm just lucky to be alive at the same time,' she added. 'Oh, Mary!' is a revisionist farce that looks at American history during the administration of Abraham Lincoln, exploring the curious dynamic between the president – who many posit was in the closet – and his unruly, alcoholic wife Mary Todd leading up to their fateful night out to the theater. Monsoon is set to perform in 'Oh, Mary!' from August 4 to September 27, following a run by Tituss Burgess. Escola originated the role when the show opened last summer and continued until January. Escola returned for a limited run in April, which concludes this weekend. In her time in the 'Drag Race' orbit, Monsoon was a popular figure whose theatrics, impeccable comic timing and biting humor often shined through, especially in the Snatch Game segments when she impersonated legends such as Edie Beale. Monsoon has also amassed an impressive theater resume, both on the Great White Way and off. She appeared in 'Chicago' and can currently be seen in 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical.' She also enjoyed a run as Audrey in 'Little Shop of Horrors' off-Broadway and regularly tours. She performs a beloved holiday show with her fellow 'Drag Race' alum BenDeLaCreme.
CNN
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Jinkx Monsoon to take over lead role on Broadway's ‘Oh, Mary!'; says she's ‘lucky to be alive at same time as' Cole Escola
Mary Todd Lincoln, meet Jinkx Monsoon. Monsoon, best known for her winning runs on both 'RuPaul's Drag Race' and 'Drag Race All Stars,' announced on Wednesday that she is set to take over the lead role in the wild, Tony-winning historical spoof 'Oh, Mary!' on Broadway this summer. Current star Cole Escola won the Tony Award for best lead actor in a play for the role earlier this month, and is also credited with writing the play. In Monsoon's announcement, she called Escola a 'genius' and said the play was 'one of the best things I've ever seen.' 'Cole is easily the funniest person alive and I'm just lucky to be alive at the same time,' she added. 'Oh, Mary!' is a revisionist farce that looks at American history during the administration of Abraham Lincoln, exploring the curious dynamic between the president – who many posit was in the closet – and his unruly, alcoholic wife Mary Todd leading up to their fateful night out to the theater. Monsoon is set to perform in 'Oh, Mary!' from August 4 to September 27, following a run by Tituss Burgess. Escola originated the role when the show opened last summer and continued until January. Escola returned for a limited run in April, which concludes this weekend. In her time in the 'Drag Race' orbit, Monsoon was a popular figure whose theatrics, impeccable comic timing and biting humor often shined through, especially in the Snatch Game segments when she impersonated legends such as Edie Beale. Monsoon has also amassed an impressive theater resume, both on the Great White Way and off. She appeared in 'Chicago' and can currently be seen in 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical.' She also enjoyed a run as Audrey in 'Little Shop of Horrors' off-Broadway and regularly tours. She performs a beloved holiday show with her fellow 'Drag Race' alum BenDeLaCreme.
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
"Oh, Mary!" star Cole Escola manifested their Tony win the old-fashioned way
It seems to happen less and less, but every so often, the stars still align. The puzzle pieces of the universe fit perfectly together. A witch's dusty spellbook — trapped in the highest tower of the oldest castle — flies open all on its own, turning its pages to an old incantation said to make everything okay again, if only for a few moments. With that, the die is cast, destiny is in motion and Mary Todd Lincoln gets her long-awaited Tony for her cabaret prowess. Or, rather, her second Tony, as 'Oh, Mary!' scribe and star Cole Escola so studiously noted as they accepted their Tony for best actor in a play at Sunday's Tony Awards ceremony. 'Julie Harris has a Tony for playing Mary Todd Lincoln,' Escola said as they started their speech, paying reverence to the stage legend's 1972 play, 'The Last of Mrs. Lincoln.' But in Escola's relatively short time in their first starring role on Broadway, they've become something of a legend themself. 'Oh, Mary!' is Escola's debut on Broadway proper, after a throng of smaller (though no less hysterical) off-Broadway and independent cabaret and solo shows, and the play was a hit within minutes of its first preview's curtain-raise in January 2024. The show imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a hard-drinking, boisterous, wannabe cabaret star, beleaguered by her marriage to what Escola imagines is an obviously gay president. It's not so much laugh-a-minute as it is laugh-a-second. When I saw the play during its initial off-Broadway run at Manhattan's Lucille Lortel Theater in March 2024, the sold-out house practically shook with thunderous applause during the cast's final bows. 'Oh, Mary!' is the kind of instant sensation that's all too rare these days, one so undeniable it immediately breaks through the crowd of theater savants to a wider audience of curious patrons. To longtime fans of Escola's like myself, the show's smash success is more of a reason to shed a tear than it is any surprise. Escola's work has always been blissfully weird yet totally charming, hyper-confident in its discerning peculiarity. And 'Oh, Mary!' is their long-gestating, brilliant brainchild, shepherded from an email Escola sent to themselves in 2009 all the way to the Tonys stage. It's a theater of the politically absurd when every day of our waking lives is a theater of the politically absurd. But the convergence of Escola's talents and our national nightmares wasn't some stroke of luck. Escola didn't catch up to the culture; the culture caught up to them. Their win and ongoing success are fate manifested, a testament to the power of hard work and uncompromising vision. Sometimes, the right things still happen. If you haven't yet had the chance to see 'Oh, Mary!' live, Escola succinctly describes the play in that 2009 email they sent themselves, as retold in their recent interview with 'CBS Sunday Morning.' 'What if Abraham Lincoln's assassination wasn't such a bad thing for Mary Todd?' the email read. But as Escola tells it, this kernel of a larger concept was too precious to let go of back then. 'I loved this idea so much, I didn't want it to get on paper and for it to disappoint me,' Escola said in the interview. 'To disappoint me, not just the audience, but me. There are certain ideas that you're just like, 'Oh, I don't want to plant this seed, because what if it's an ugly flower?'" The fear is understandable, given the number of things that could go wrong in the process of turning one simple idea into a fully mounted Broadway production. But Escola has never been afraid of a little ugliness or a little grit. Their willingness to embrace the flawed, strange parts of life has long been part of their unique allure. Take something like 'Pee Pee Manor,' their 17-minute 'unaired television pilot that was too awful to air,' about a woman who moves into a cursed piece of broken-down real estate, posted directly to Escola's YouTube channel. Like all of Escola's work, it's outrageous and unforgettable, showcasing a flair for character work unlike anyone else. Escola is preternaturally gifted when it comes to picking up on people's eccentricities and molding them into a beautifully Frankensteined creation. When Donna, the short's bouffant-styled main character, says her first line — 'So eventually I just took the thing down, I said, 'I'm sick of feedin' humming birds, they oughta feed me for once!' — the viewer knows exactly who this woman is and what she's all about. She's our mother, our grandmother, our wacky aunt and the woman striking up a conversation with us in the checkout line at Kohl' same goes for Escola's version of Mary Todd, who arrived fully formed by the time her loafers hit the stage of the Lucille Lortel for the first time. Mary is a whiskey-smuggling alcoholic and man-eating cabaret amateur, so dead bored in her marriage that she wishes her husband were dead himself. She yells, stomps her feet and raises her hoop skirt and petticoat to scandalous heights. Meanwhile, Abraham (Conrad Ricamora) has a pesky Civil War to deal with, so he leaves Mary in the care of her chaperone (Bianca Leigh) and teacher (James Scully). She loathes the former and lusts after the latter, and her heightened emotions and cabaret dreams swell to a magnificent, hysterical crescendo unlike Broadway has ever seen. In a way, 'Oh, Mary!' is the anti-'Hamilton.' It's not concerned with America's founding principles but rather with the country's spectacle. This is the way things have always been, which is to say: totally bananas. It's no wonder the play hit when America's political atmosphere feels its most ridiculous. It is a uniquely strange feeling to watch Escola's success reach new, deserved heights as America falls off the deep end. I've been devouring Escola's work for well over a decade, since I discovered the videos they were making online in the late 2000s, alongside their best friend, Jeffery Self. As scrappy, floppy-haired creators in YouTube's nascent days, Self and Escola made short, terribly smart and timely videos under the moniker VGL Gay Boys. ('Very Good Looking,' as the acronym stands.) The videos' modest success among the gay community landed the two a short-lived sketch show on Logo, 'Jeffery and Cole Casserole.' Think of it like a proof-of-concept for something like 'Broad City,' another show about two New York millennials that similarly went from web series to television — only 'Jeffrey and Cole Casserole' had a much shorter lifespan. Things were far more hopeful back then. How could they not be? Barack Obama was pulling ahead in polling, and the cultural tides were starting to turn in favor of the late aughts' flavor of liberalism. Don't Ask Don't Tell was on its way out and gay marriage was on the horizon! A new artist by the name of Lady Gaga was bursting onto the scene! 'The Dark Knight' was making superhero movies cool again! It was a formative time for the newly out-of-the-closet, 14-year-old me, who recognized my sick and stupid sense of humor in Escola and Self's videos. Perhaps my favorite of them all was a video called 'VGL Gay Boys with Bernadette Peters,' the first selection of what would become an ongoing, go-to impression for Escola, who donned a curly, red wig and squeaky voice to parody the Broadway legend. The premise of the video is simple: Self and Escola were going to record a video review of the 2008 comedy 'Get Smart,' but Escola insists on playing Bernadette Peters for the day. Unwilling to break character, Escola's version of Peters has not seen the movie, so instead, the pair reviews 'Home Alone 2,' which Peters can't recall a single frame of either. The video is barely two minutes long, yet incessantly quotable, which any friend of mine for the last 17 years has learned at one point or another when they've been subjected to watching it. Seeing Escola on the Tonys red carpet, I couldn't help but recall that video for the billionth time. Escola did, after all, show up to the ceremony in Bernadette Peters drag, now polished and elevated thanks to all of that Broadway box office record-shattering. Escola sported a curly updo and a gown that was an homage to the costume Peters wore accepting her Tony in 1999 for 'Annie Get Your Gun.' Seeing Escola on that stage accepting their first Tony while honoring one of their formative inspirations, it struck me that this is the kind of heartening, full-circle moment we rarely witness. Is that not the American dream, being born into one life or socioeconomic status and forging your way into whatever your picture of success looks like? Escola went from recording videos on a webcam to accepting the Tony for best actor; from imitating a legend to becoming one in their own right. But for Escola, it seemed almost predestined, spoken into the universe so frequently it had to become true. Calling it a picture of the American dream would be reductive, diminishing all of the work that Escola has done to apply it to an outmoded path toward prosperity. 'Oh, Mary!' might be a distinctly American show, but this is Escola's dream, first and foremost, and it was going to come to fruition no matter what. In that VGL Gay Boys 'Get Smart' review video, Escola's version of Bernadette Peters tells Self, 'I haven't seen any movie since 1999.' When Self asks why that year specifically, Escola replies, 'That's the year I won my Tony.' And at the mic, Tony in hand and dressed as Peters was in 1999, Escola took a moment to bring it back to where it all began. 'To the most important people in my life, my friends, who are here tonight,' Escola said, before shouting out Self at the top of the list. And there in the audience was Self, shedding a tear for his friend, watching their dream come true.
Los Angeles Times
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Cole Escola's ‘Oh Mary!' is a hoot, but the Tony should go to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' ‘Purpose'
'Oh, Mary!' is poised to have a big night at the Tony Awards on Sunday. A campy melodrama by alt comic Cole Escola, the play conjures to the stage a vision of Mary Todd Lincoln as a harridan and drunk, who's sick of the restraints being placed on her at the White House and desperate to return to her first love, cabaret. As played by Escola, the First Lady is a tramp with a showbiz dream and an unslakable thirst for whiskey. Poor Mary has reason to be in a state of spiraling turmoil. Husband Abraham Lincoln (Conrad Ricamora), wary of Mary's scandalous behavior, has placed her booze under lock and key. The Civil War, which is jeopardizing his presidency, has turned him into an utter killjoy. Overcome with stress, he's finding it harder than ever to resist his homosexual urges. He prays for willpower, but his assistant (Tony Macht) is all too willing to go above and beyond the call of duty. The production, directed by Sam Pinkleton, plays this delirious situation to the comic hilt. Melodramatic tropes, from the striking of over-the-top poses to thunderous piano underscoring during moments of rising tension, situate 'Oh, Mary!' in a bygone theatrical universe. Escola's Mary, dressed like a 19th century version of Wednesday Addams from 'The Addams Family,' can't contain herself. Don't let the rouged cheeks and Shirley Temple curls fool you. That demonic glint in her eye isn't a ruse. Escola is part of a wave of comics, along with Megan Stalter, who built their fan bases by posting comic vignettes on social media during the pandemic. Both were crucial mental health resources during that dark time, and both found a wider embrace online for their niche comic sensibilities. 'Oh, Mary!,' which had its premiere off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre last year, has become the mascot production of the Broadway season. It's the unexpected hit that proves that, while there are no sure bets anymore on Broadway, success is more likely when artists are allowed the courage of their crackpot convictions. I'm elated for 'Oh, Mary!,' but I think it would be a mistake to reward the show's giddy Broadway triumph with the Tony for best play. The category is too rich to be treated as a popularity contest this year. Artistic discernment is called for when deciding among works as good as these. The race includes two plays that received the Pulitzer Prize, the 2023 winner, Sanaz Toossi's 'English' and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' newly awarded 'Purpose.' Jez Butterworth, who won the 2019 Tony for his play 'The Ferryman,' has outdone himself with 'The Hills of California,' the fall season's best (and most intricately woven) drama, magisterially directed by Sam Mendes. And 'John Proctor Is the Villain,' Kimberly Belflower's reconsideration of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible,' thrillingly staged by Danya Taymor, is perhaps the feat of playwriting that surprised me most in this group. 'Oh, Mary!' ought to receive a special citation. Not only is it in a category of its own, but it doesn't bear comparison with the other nominees. And this point of view has nothing to do with any bias against camp. In fact, it's my deep affection for the genre that has compelled me to raise what I assume will be an unpopular opinion. In her landmark 1964 essay 'Notes on 'Camp',' Susan Sontag observed that the 'whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to 'the serious.' One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.' The silliness of 'Oh, Mary!' shouldn't be held against it. Artistic worthiness isn't measured by gravity of subject matter. But there's something mainstream about Escola's outrageous flamboyance — it's camp for 'The Carol Burnett Show' crowd. Sontag noted that camp functions as 'a private code, a badge of identity even.' I wasn't sure who 'Oh, Mary!' was pitched to, but it didn't seem intended for someone whose camp sensibility was forged watching the plays of Charles Ludlam at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in Greenwich Village or the drag headliners of East Village bars and clubs that made such an impression on me in the 1980s and 1990s. That was a bleak period to be coming of age in New York. The AIDS crisis left the gay community in a state of mournful siege. Camp offered sanctuary, a mode of performance that didn't suffer hypocritical fools gladly. There was something transgressive and liberating about an aesthetic that inverted not only good and bad taste but also conventional and unconventional morality. 'Oh, Mary!' is fearlessly raunchy but never is it truly dangerous. The show is both a novelty on Broadway and completely at home there. The audience members laughing the hardest on a recent visit to the Lyceum Theatre were the older married couples who found it risqué enough to enjoy but not so risqué that it might upend their thinking of right and wrong. As a spoof of melodrama, it is sprightly, crisply executed and untaxingly entertaining. Part of the appeal of 'Oh, Mary!' is that it just wants to give audiences a concentrated dose of hilarity. Escola recognizes the importance of not being earnest. But the mainstream success the show is enjoying is a sign of something more subversive being watered down. The Tony nominating committee has demonstrated remarkable judgment this year. Let's hope Tony voters follow suit and give one of the other four best play nominees the award. If forced to pick a winner, I would opt for 'Purpose,' Jacobs-Jenkins' engrossing family drama set in the household of a civil rights icon, whose personal and public morality haven't always been aligned. Any concise description of 'Purpose' is bound to fail because the play is so multifarious and complex. Jacobs-Jenkins has written a domestic drama in the epic tradition of 'Death of a Salesman,' 'Long Day's Journey Into Night,' 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' and 'August: Osage County.' The playwright has pursued this line before in 'Appropriate,' which won the Tony for best revival last year. But here the focus is on a Black family grappling both with the burdens and privileges of a father's unique legacy and the difficulty of adapting to changing times and new frontiers of political struggle. Whenever you think you know which way 'Purpose' is heading, it veers off in an unexpected direction. The play leaves the mundane world to engage in spiritual questions between an old-school father (Harry Lennix) and his independent-minded youngest son, Nazareth (Jon Michael Hill), who left divinity school to become a nature photographer. 'Naz,' as he's known, serves as the play's narrator. And as someone who identifies as asexual and is possibly on the spectrum, he brings a bracingly original perspective to the classic homecoming play, updating the genre for the 21st century. 'Purpose' deserves an extensive life after Broadway, and a Tony would help its producing prospects. The Steppenwolf Theatre production at the Helen Hayes Theater, directed by Phylicia Rashad and featuring one of the best ensemble casts of the season, is intimidatingly good. (LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Lennix, Hill, Glenn Davis and Kara Young were all nominated for their work, but the company really deserves a collective award.) It's a long play (nearly three hours), and one you might not care to see performed with second-tier performers. A Tony would create more incentive for regional theaters to rise to the challenge, though with a Pulitzer, New York Drama Critics' Award and Drama Desk Award, 'Purpose' is hardly lacking in accolades. There was a time not so long ago when the future of the Broadway play was in serious doubt. The threat hasn't gone away, and Tony voters shouldn't pass up an opportunity to honor true playwriting excellence.
New York Times
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
5 Years After Covid Closed the Theaters, Audiences Are Returning
It was five years ago today — March 12, 2020 — that the widening coronavirus pandemic forced Broadway to go dark, museums to shut their doors, concert halls and opera houses to go silent and stadiums and arenas to remain empty. At the time, they hoped to reopen in a month. It took many a year and a half. Since live performances resumed, the recovery has been uneven, but there are signs that audiences are finally coming back. Here's a snapshot of where things stand: Broadway is 95 percent back. It's been a slow road back for Broadway, but the industry is finally nearing its prepandemic levels. Attendance so far this season is at about 95 percent of what it was at the same point in the 2018-2019 season, its last full season before the pandemic, when it was setting records. 'Oh, Mary!' has been a surprise hit this season, reminding the industry that shows can work without known I.P. or famous stars. 'Wicked' is defying gravity thanks to the renewed interest brought by the film adaptation. For the first time since 2018, all 41 Broadway theaters have had shows in them this season. And there are more shows than usual regularly grossing more than $1 million a week. But — and this is a big but — profitability is down. That's because the costs of producing on Broadway keep rising, so even reasonably strong ticket sales are not enough. Beyond Times Square, the picture is decidedly mixed. Touring Broadway shows have been selling quite strongly. But nonprofit theaters, both Off Broadway and in cities across the country, are struggling. Having burned through the government assistance that came at the height of the pandemic, many regional theaters are now reporting budget deficits and are programming fewer shows and attracting smaller audiences than they did previously. — Michael Paulson Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
