With their deranged portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln, the actor and writer, best known for their appearance on Search Party and Difficult People, emerges from the “gay shadows” in a hysterical farce. As Julian Lucas shows, there’s no one quite like Cole Escola working in comedy today:
Onstage in a taffeta hoop skirt and a wig of “bratty” curls, Escola’s Mary is a tantrum personified, clutching her flounces and furbelows as she terrorizes the Oval Office. The First Lady goes low at every opportunity, whether it’s smashing open a desk in search of whiskey or reading Shakespeare in the cadences of “a horny snake.” Remarkably, for a play about the Presidency scheduled to close in November, “Oh, Mary!” thumbs its nose at questions of history and politics. (When Abe complains that he’s hated in the South, Mary exclaims, “South of what?”) It’s less of a dodge than a puckish gambit; in Escola’s anti-“Hamilton,” bawdy jokes fly without the safety net of “serious” themes. “I am the stupidest person here, and I mean that as an insult to all of you,” Escola said while accepting a Drama Desk Award. For them, “stupid” is a term of art, an assertion that killer comedy needs no alibi.
“Oh, Mary!,” directed by Sam Pinkleton, earned more than a million dollars in its first full week, breaking the Lyceum’s all-time box-office record; Escola celebrated its première by inviting audiences to a leather bar. The show is not only proof of their comedic brilliance but a defense of their sensibility. They are often classed as part of a wave of New Queer Comedy, alongside entertainers such as Bowen Yang, John Early, and Ayo Edebiri. But Escola’s rigorous weirdness is singular, combining “low” humor with the stylized precision of a pre-Code Hollywood starlet. Their work forgoes relatability to revel in delusion, with all its abjection and pathos—especially their own. “Her arc is my arc,” Escola said of their First Lady. “Her wanting to do cabaret is me wanting to do the play about Mary Todd Lincoln.”
