Mary has landed in London, bringing her merciless merriment with her. I’m referring, of course, to Mary Todd Lincoln, the irrepressible heroine of “Oh, Mary!” — the Broadway hit that opened Thursday at the Trafalgar Theater on the West End.
I first made this remarkable character’s acquaintance two summers ago on Broadway, where she was played by the show’s author, Cole Escola, who went on to win a Tony for the performance. Here Mary is again, in the gifted hands of another nonbinary American performer, the brilliant Mason Alexander Park, who has become a London stage regular in recent years.
The piece’s humor may well prove too out there for some, and many gags can’t be printed here. But those who are down for it are sure to embrace the wild ride sustained across 80 giddy, unbroken minutes by a tireless supporting cast, steered by the director Sam Pinkleton, who won a Tony of his own last June.
It’s the raciest, rudest, most rip-roaringly funny show in town.
Historians may be frustrated to find that the central comic figure of “Oh, Mary!” bears little relation a first lady extensively chronicled elsewhere. (Another show about Abraham Lincoln’s wife, “Mrs. President,” opens at the nearby Charing Cross Theater next month.) Homework, therefore, is not required before “Oh, Mary!,” a comedy that owes everything to the queer, alt-cabaret Off Broadway environment where Escola got their start and nothing at all to history class.
Indeed, while Abraham Lincoln (Giles Terera) — referred to here merely as “Mary’s Husband” — is presiding over a country at war, Mary’s boozy attentions center on herself. Heedless of her children, one of whom died the year before, Mary is driven by a desire to be recognized as a celebrated cabaret artiste. Her husband points out that she might want to spare a thought for the conflict with the South, to which Mary’s response is the South “of what?”
Narcissistic to a fault, Mary just wants to be seen — which, in her case, means being heard as the clarion-voiced chanteuse of her dreams. Abe, for his part, wishes that Mary would relax her grip on the bottle. To that end, he hires several people to help by way of distraction, among them a glistening-eyed chaperone (a delicious Kate O’Donnell) with a fetish for ice cream, and a handsome acting coach (the fetching Dino Fetscher) possessed, we’re told, of “a pretty face and a fat ass.”
Body parts catch the eye of a president who is keeping a lid on some fiercely simmering same-sex leanings. Let’s just say that his assistant (a game Oliver Stockley) helps out in more ways than one. The imposingly hirsute Terera has a field day as Abe, having previously won an Olivier Award for playing another American icon, Aaron Burr, in “Hamilton.”
Events lead inevitably to the fateful performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater on that grievous day in April 1865. But of primary interest in the presidential assassination — in this telling, anyway — is that it allows Mary at long last to be fully herself. (One of the first things she does is shed her married name.) The disco anthem “I Will Survive” plays in the auditorium before the show starts, and this Mary, you sense, will manage that and more.
In New York, there was speculation over the show’s viability when its creator left the cast earlier this year. That has turned out to be no problem on Broadway, where there have been multiple Marys and the production has continued to break box office records.
Park turns out to be perfect casting, not only because they get to act, deliberately badly, a snippet from “The Tempest,” a play in which they excelled this time last year. But nothing in their work prepared me for the physical brio on display. In a hoop skirt wide enough to take out the first few rows of the theater, Mary does amusing battle with the Oval Office desk (design is by the design collective Dots,) spinning at one point on its surface like an out-of-control top.
She’s hilarious in repose, reading the dictionary in an effort, you realize later, to improve a tenuous grasp of spelling, and she’s equally funny interrupting herself midsentence on the word “curry,” which she says has made her hungry.
There’s real feeling, too, to a scene in which Mary overhears aspersions spoken about her that would send anyone into free fall. My audience sighed in audible sympathy, and quite rightly: Mary may have a venomous wit and a manner that can turn on a dime from seductive to savage, but she deserves the love of which she is also capable — and that informs Pinkleton’s production throughout.
Nor does the mirth end onstage. Playgoers will note a bust of Escola beside the staircase leading to the auditorium, which makes you wonder if Mary has Mt. Rushmore in her sights. And there’s a portrait near the bar (where else?) of Park, who, the caption cheekily misinforms us, was born in 1914. At age 111, Park is doing very well indeed!
Oh, Mary!
Through April 25 at the Trafalgar Theater in London; trafalgartheatre.com.
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